'Man-made, synthetic viruses with  the ability to multiply by the millions are "very close" '

And biotech is supposed to be our front line of defence?!!
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Making life from scratch is now 'imminent': From minimal genomes: Viruses the size of HIV are likely to come first
Margaret Munro National Post
Wednesday, February 21, 2001  
SAN FRANCISCO - Scientists will soon be able to create viruses that never  existed before, and bring extinct horrors such as smallpox  back to life, says a leading geneticist who is working to  create life from scratch. Man-made, synthetic viruses with  the ability to multiply by the millions are "very close,"  Clyde Hutchison, of the University of North Carolina in  Chapel Hill, N.C., told the annual meeting of the American  Association for the Advancement of Science on Tuesday.

"That's something to be considered as being imminent," said  Hutchison, who warned the technology holds much promise but  could also "potentially be misused."

Already, researchers associated with a biotechnology  company in Texas are believed to be synthesizing pieces of  DNA big enough to generate viruses, said Hutchison. But the  scientists involved are not releasing details of the work  for "proprietary reasons," he said. He stopped short of  saying such companies should declare what they are up to.

But some ethicists at the conference said one of the more  worrisome aspect of the genetic revolution is that so much  of the work is being done in the private sector, away from  the gaze of regulatory bodies and ethics committees.

Hutchison's team is working to figure out the genetic  recipe needed to a create a free-living organism from  scratch. While that task is proving very tricky, he and  other geneticists say it will soon be a relatively easy  matter to tinker with existing micro-organisms to create  new, more virulent varieties, and to recreate organisms  that have lately become extinct. "Extinction isn't  forever," said Hutchison. This would be true for endangered  species, but not for already extinct ones, such as  dinosaurs. Without one complete specimen, a full  understanding of a genome is not available. "In principle,  one day someone could make smallpox," Hutchison said,  referring to the deadly microbe that has been declared  eradicated by the World Health Organization. To recreate  it, a clever geneticist would need only tweak a few genes  in a related pox organism. The prospect of that and other  sinister applications of biotechnology has some scientists  calling for international treaties that would make it a  "crime against humanity" to develop biological weapons  using the new and astonishing genetic powers. While the  advances have been profound on some levels, Hutchison said  they are moving slowly when it comes to actually creating  life in the test tube. Scientists may now be able to read  the entire three billion letters of the human genome, he  said, but they are hard-pressed to make a piece of DNA much  bigger than a few thousand letters long. "It's very  discouraging from a creation-of-life point of view," he  said. (Each letter in a genome represents a nucleic acid.)

  His team is trying to find a so-called "minimal genome"  needed to create a free-living cell. Rather than starting  from scratch, they are studying one of the simplest cells  known -- a tiny bacterium called mycoplasma genitalium,  which is commonly found on human skin and is associated  with urinary tract infections. This microbe has about 500  genes, and Hutchison and his colleagues are knocking them  out one by one to see which genes the cells can live  without. This process of elimination indicates about 300  genes are essential to life, he says. (Human beings have  about 30,000 genes.)

He said about 80 of the essential microbial genes have  unknown functions. "We don't know what they do but they  seem to be essential," he said. Hutchison figures it will  be about 10 years before scientists make a free-living  cell. To make it come to life, they will have to synthesize  and stitch together the genes needed, and get them to  orchestrate production of approximately 100 proteins.

"That's a long way off," he said, noting that the first  new form of life to emerge from the laboratory will be  viral. "Viruses seem close. That's what will happen first,"  says Hutchison, noting that scientists could create  something the size of the AIDS virus. Viruses will be  easier because their genomes are much smaller than  free-living cells. They spread by hijacking cellular  machinery inside the cells they infect to create viral  proteins and coats. Hutchison remarked, "I think we would  be playing God [by making living cells], and I think that  would not be unethical."

On the weekend, Craig Venter, president of Celera  Genomics, said biotechnology is already capable of bringing  smallpox back from the dead. "It would be relatively easy  to recreate smallpox from other animal poxes," he told a  bioweapons symposium at the conference. Venter also  defended biotechnology, saying it provides new tools that  could act as a deterrent against development of new  pathogens. Gene sequencing allows scientists to read the  DNA of micro-organisms and should enable them to detect and  track emerging pathogens "or synthetic organisms," he said.