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Can Craig Venter put an alien in your inbox?

Elizabeth Weise
USA TODAY
J. Craig Venter. He has a new book out, "Life at the Speed of Life: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of the Digital Age." (Viking, $26.95)
  • Maverick scientist working to digitize and transmit life forms
  • Wants to create what amounts to a 3-D biological printer
  • Says the world will need to take proper precautions to ensure safety

Craig Venter wants to e-mail a Martian to Earth.

Not a "Take me to your leader!" Martian, of course. A Martian single-celled organism.

The maverick scientist's latest quest is to build a Digital Biological Converter, a machine that can take an e-mailed computer file of an organism's DNA and "print" it out into a viable form using what is effectively a 3-D biological printer.

Now that science has unraveled the genomes -- or genetic blueprints -- of organisms big and small, even humans -- he thinks that's possible someday.

He writes about this, along with a host of other ideas about what we can do now that we've digitized the genome, in his latest book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life (Viking, $26.95.)

The work and the book are part of his fascination with a single question: What is life?

Venter, 67, famously first grappled with this when he launched a race to sequence the first human genome against a government-led effort. It ended in a "gentleman's tie" and the publication of a digital version of the human genome in 2001.

Next, he took on the task of building artificial life. His researchers at the Venter Institute in San Diego strung together DNA they built "from scratch" using the four basic molecules that make up the chemical rungs of the genomic ladder -- adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.

After years of work, they transplanted this artificial DNA, which was modeled on the Mycoplasma mycoides bacteria, into a receptive cell that began to reproduce. They had created the first human-made species, announced to great acclaim and some trepidation in 2010.

Venter has put these two things together and taken them to the next logical step. We can sequence an organism's genome and turn it into a digital file. We know it's possible to use a digital blueprint of a genome to construct (or reconstruct) a working model of that genome.

Venter's proposed Digital Biological Converter, or DBC, automates these processes sequentially.

A sending unit on one end takes the chosen organism, reads its DNA and writes a digital copy of it.

This is not trivial and took years to figure out how to do, all described in fascinating detail in the book. (Though a word of caution: If you flunked high school biology you might want to review the basics of genetic theory before you start reading.)

Next, the digital file is e-mailed (Venter likes to say "beamed") to a receiving unit. This reads the file and builds the DNA using something like a 3-D biological printer.

"It's about the size of a desk," Venter said in an interview with USA TODAY. "We can send it digital information and we can synthesize the DNA and robotically assemble that into genomes."

Venter's only thinking of building viruses and bacteria, not warthogs and puppies. But even at that, the possibilities are intriguing.

"I like the project very much, particularly from the standpoint of responding quickly and effectively to a newly emerged antibiotic-resistant strain" of bacteria," says Howard Hughes Medical Institutes genome researcher James Collins of Boston University.

The printing part of the work is now in the testing phase. Venter expects to have a machine that can do it on the market "by next year," he says. He calls it a Gene Bot. "It's basically a DNA assembly machine," he says.

"I do think this is feasible, and I think Craig and his team can pull it off," says Collins.

The technology is "very much worth pursuing," says Adam Paul Arkin, director of the Physical Biosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

For example, Venter "is using the technology to receive sequence results on flu across the globe. Back in San Diego he assembles the key parts of the virus that allow estimation of its virulence and construction of a vaccine," Arkin says.

One test Venter's team is working on involves sending the digitized genetic blueprint of a bacteriophage (a bacteria-killing virus) to the DBC. It will build the phage. His team at the Venter Institute will then use it to infect a bacteria.

If the bacteria dies, the test worked.

Once they've gotten this worked out, they'll start constructing a machine that automatically inserts the newly built DNA into a cell that's had its own genetic material removed. The new DNA would program the cell to develop into the "e-mailed" organism.

Still, it's one thing to describe what you plan to do and another thing to actually do it, says Anthony Hunt, a professor in the department of bioengineering at the University of California, San Francisco. "Venter glosses over the immense knowledge void" required to make this work, he says.

As always, the devil is in the details. It's hard enough to accurately do 3-D printing at this point. Doing it with DNA and ensuring that everything exactly meets specifications and is "aligned so that when completed, the machine works as designed," is no easy feat, Hunt says.

Venter acknowledges that this isn't going to be ready for market this year. But he's hoping in the not-too-distant future that researchers at the Venter Institute will be able to do a test run in the Mojave Desert, digging up soil, incubating bacteria that might be found there and "beaming" them to their San Diego laboratory.

Venter already knows what he ultimately wants to do with this technology—build Martian life on Earth so we can get a good look at it.

How do you e-mail a Martian? First, says Venter, send a probe to Mars with the capability of drilling a deep hole in the surface, down to layers where there is still liquid or frozen water. Take samples of that water and bring them to surface.

Incubate those samples to grow any microscopic life forms (bacteria, viruses, etc.) that might live there. When you have a live colony in a petri dish, sequence the life form's genome and upload it to a computer.

Beam the resulting computer file back to Earth, which will take about 4.3 minutes because of the distances involved.

Send the file to a Digital Biological Converter. It will use the computer file to create an exact, real-life replica of the genome of the Martian organism, using off-the-shelf chemicals.

Insert this DNA into an emptied-out cell and grow it up in a petri dish here on Earth.

Voilà! You are the proud owner of a Martian organism.

Venter admits that getting to Mars and drilling that deep is the hard part.

"Finding the alien, that's the rate-limiting step," he says. "My view is we have to get down to the water level or at least the ice level."

He gives it several years before the necessary equipment will make it to the red planet. By then he expects to have the Digital Biological Converter ready to go.

Which is good because "my friend Elon Musk (the creator of the Tesla electric car) wants to colonize Mars in the not-too-distant future," he says.

Once Musk does, Venter's sure he can beam instructions for the colony to build vaccines to treat illnesses that might crop up or "new cells for making things."

Venter realizes this all might sound a little worrisome to those already concerned about genetically engineered crops and the like. "It needs to be monitored and regulated and safety studies done," he says.

And these won't be available at your local Walmart. "We'll only sell our machines to reputable laboratories and with lots of security built in."

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