Venter made an artificial chromosome and may have already created artificial life in his lab. Is it a solution for global warming, or a plot for world domination? Anyway, it's a lot to think about and discuss.
posted by strangeguitars on Oct 6, 2007 - 35 comments

Electric Sheep: Collaborative Fractal Generation
Electric Sheep is a distributed screen-saver that harnesses idle computers into a render farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life-forms.The project is an attention vortex. It illustrates the process by which the longer and closer one studies something, the more detail and structure appears.

You can look at some fresh samples or you can read the Interpretation, watch the Sheepumentary, post a comment, design your own or design them and post them to their server or download a copy and play along at home.
You can even get a copy of the source code to play around with if you're so inclined.

Me? I'm just gonna look at the pretty pictures.
posted by fenriq on Feb 1, 2005 - 17 comments

New Scientist reports that a virus has been built up from mail order components. Other reports on this are in USA Today and Nature. This isn't time life has been created in the lab, as previously linked.
What's interesting is that this study was funded by the Department of Energy to produce a completely man made lifeform that can create hydrogen or consume greenhouse gasses. The present virus is an artificially created copy of a naturally occurring virus.
posted by substrate on Nov 14, 2003 - 7 comments

they've got god... world's first completely artificial lifeform created. ethical, spiritual, and social implications a-go-go, via blogdex.
posted by moonbird on Jan 17, 2003 - 37 comments

A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver. It was supposed to evolve into an oscillator (through a genetic algorithm). This is astonishing and shows the power of evolutionary algorithms... [via missing matter]
posted by talos on Oct 7, 2002 - 32 comments