Ibrahim

Hey, I'm Ib rahim al Hashimi, a rising senior at Al-Andalus Private Schools in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Born in Bryan, TX, I went back to Jeddah when I was about five years old, right after my father and mother had completed their graduate studies at Texas A&M University, getting doctoral degrees in computer science and statistics respectively. I enrolled in an average Saudi Arabian school and studied there until 9th grade, when I switched to an American curriculum school. Having taken biology and enjoyed it, I decided to utilize my time this summer by taking a biology course through the Mawhiba scholarship program, who sent me here to this great program at the BLI. As biology has always been my favorite of the sciences (right after xenoarcheology, of course), it simply made sense for me to pursue it further during the summer. For my undergraduate studies, I hope to study engineering (don't ask me what discipline, I haven't decided yet) at the King Abdulaziz University right there in Jeddah, and then obtain a Masters of Business Administration from the prestigious Sloane School of Business at MIT. From there, the sky's the limit, and who knows what could be in store for me? Anyway, I've probably already said a lot more than I intended to and, since I don't feel like reading it all over again and revising it, I'll just end it right here by saying that I look forward to a great three weeks, and don't be a stranger!

=**Research Project: Venter's Man-Made Genome**=

**Venter’s Man-Made Genome: Blessing or Curse? **   In May of 2010, a group of scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), led by, you guessed it, J. Craig Venter, announced that they had created the first organism from a completely synthetic genome. Its genome was designed by a computer, synthesized in a lab, and transplanted in a recipient cell. Heralded as a breakthrough by most in the scientific community, the concept of artificial life has not been without controversy. Many have raised questions as to whether humans should be “creating life”, and if it would constitute “playing God”. Moreover, this nascent technology has engendered fears that it could be exploited for unscrupulous ends. All this and more shall be discussed in the following paper.  So, how did Venter acco mplish this incredible feat? Well, to start, he and his team sequenced completely the genome of a simple microorganism called //Mycoplasma mycoides //, a parasite that lives inside ruminants. They then synthesized a completely artificial copy of that genome using, as Venter calls it, "four bottles of chemicals", or more accurately, the four nucleobases found in DNA and RNA: adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine. The team's copy was nearly identical to //M. mycoides //' save for a few phrases they transcribed in the DNA as "watermarks". These phrases were put in to distinguish the synthetic DNA from the wild type //M. mycoides //DNA and included the names of 46 key contributors to the project, a website address, and three philosophical quotations. Made of 1.08 million base pairs, it is nearly twice the length of Venter's 2008 genome, and for the first time, completely synthetic. The recipient cell used was an emptied-out shell of a //Mycoplasma capricolum. //Once the synthetic //M. mycoides //DNA was transplanted into the //M. capricolum //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.5;">, the cell started behaving like a normal //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.5;">M. mycoides //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.5;">, producing proteins encoded in its DNA and reproducing on its own, replicating over a billion times since it was first synthesized. However, since it is an exact replica of a wild type //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.5;">M. mycoides, //<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.5;">some have refrained from calling this new organism “artificial life”, instead comparing it to a clone. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> Needless to say, ethical issues have risen with the rise of synthetic life. Among those are environmental impact, human testing, and even deliberate misuse. The environmental damage that the creation of synthetic life could potentially cause is unprecedented. What if a sample of artificially engineered organisms was accidentally released into the biosphere to interact freely with wild organisms? There would be tremendous, unforeseen consequences. Though suicide genes would be inserted in the transplanted DNA, effectively acting as a “kill switch”, the self-replicating nature of these organisms mean that mutations could render these controls futile. Then there is the issue of bioterrorism, which would doubtless be deadlier than any plane or bomb. Since these organisms can be synthesized to perform theoretically any task, they can be designed to target a specific genetic sequence (i.e. a specific person or group of people), while leaving another genetic sequence unharmed, virtually protecting whomever controls the organism. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> In recent months, there has been talk that scientists at the JCVI are close to creating synthetic life from scratch, meaning without the recipient cell. No journal has published any research on this as yet, although Venter has confirmed that his team is “close” to accomplishing this feat. Dubbed the “Hail Mary Genome”, this genome’s significance may not be immediately apparent. However, it may be the first step towards truly synthetic organisms, as this genome’s components would be fully known to man, making its manipulation a far easier feat for genetic engineers. It would be simply a template, a chassis, which can then be fitted with any “machine” to make it operate in a desirable way. The possibilities are endless: bacteria that can synthesize pharmaceuticals, or produce energy sustainably, or clean up oil spills with nearly no damage to the environment. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> Conclusively, this new discovery constitutes a great advancement in the fields of synthetic biology and genetic engineering, and will surely bring with it great benefits, albeit with a few risks.

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