Scouring the Seas for Matter to Create Life

Can we create ''super bacteria'' capable of generating energy? There are those who believe it can be done, including the controversial scientist J. Craig Venter, expert in synthetic biology.

BROOKLIN, Canada - Somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean, a private research ship owned by controversial genetic scientist J. Craig Venter is collecting bacteria from the sea, hoping to find the biological building blocks he can use to create a synthetic life-form that will one day become a new source of energy.

As fantastic as it sounds, U.S. scientists, including Venter, have already created such life forms from bits of DNA, the building blocks of the cells that make up all living things.

For instance, in 2002, geneticists at the State University of New York manufactured a polio virus. While that effort took years, Venter in two weeks last year assembled a bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria A1.

Bacteriophage is a very simple life form, with just 5,000 base pairs in its genetic map. The human genome has three billion pairs.

Bacteria have around four million, and creating an artificial version would be much more complicated, but there are those who believe it can be done.

The process is called synthetic biology or nano-biotechnology, and uses pieces of DNA and individual molecules to build what are in essence living machines.

Venter and his peers are scouring the planet for bacteria that are much more efficient than known varieties at converting sunlight and biological matter into energy, the basis for the alternative energy source biomass, which turns agricultural and other biological waste into fuel.

The DNA of those super bacteria would then provide the blueprint for the living machines.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) thinks Venter is the scientist for this job.

Last year the DOE gave Venter's organization, the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives (IBEA), nine million dollars to create artificial organisms that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and to produce biological energy sources.

With this advance, U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said in a statement, ''It is easier to imagine, in the not-too-distant future, a colony of specially designed microbes living within the emission-control system of a coal-fired plant, consuming its pollution and its carbon dioxide, or employing microbes to radically reduce water pollution or to reduce the toxic effects of radioactive waste.''

But other observers see a more frightening future.

The creation of new life forms has enormous implications for all humankind, says Silvia Ribeiro of the environmental non-governmental ETC Group.

''This is potentially much riskier than GM (genetically modified) crops. Releasing completely new forms of life into the world might open a Pandora's box,'' she told Tierramérica from her Mexico City office.

''There should be an open, public debate about this.''

IBEA did not reply to Tierramérica's requests for comment.

Brewster Kneen, a Canadian writer and biotechnology critic, sees Venter's quest as more of the U.S. government's continuing promotion of biotechnology as the solution to all problems.

''Rather than making real efforts to deal with the sources of pollutants, they try to distract people with this 'magic bullet' thinking,'' he said in an interview.

David Caron, a marine biologist at the University of Southern California, says Venter's project has the potential to solve some environmental problems but is a very long-term proposition. ''We can't even guess what they'll find.''

* Stephen Leahy is a Tierramérica contributor.