New life form to be created

Genetics researcher Dr Craig Venter, who gained international attention when his company, Celera Genomics, beat the non-profit Human Genome Project in the race to sequence the human genome, recently revealed that he intends to create a new living organism.

Dr Venter and Nobel laureate Professor Hamilton Smith have received the go ahead from an ethics committee and a $3m (£1.9m; €3m) grant from the US Department of Energy to pursue the project.

The ethics committee, which is known as the Ethics of Genomics Group, is funded by an “unrestricted grant” from The Institute of Genomics Research (TIGR), based in Rockville, Maryland, a research institute, which Venter founded. It …