Are you guys familiar with Dr. Craig Venter? He is a biologist at the J Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland and is the first person to have his entire genetic makeup read.

Now, Venter and his team reached a milestone today as they were successfully able to take the whole genome of a bacterial cell and transplanted it into a closely related species. This process, which Venter's team refer to as "species transplant", led to the creation of an entirely new species.

This is not the most interesting part, however, as the biologist mentioned that they are planning to do the same thing with a synthetic genome made from scratch in the laboratory - pushing the possibility of creating a synthetic life form.

"We would hope to have the first fuel from synthetic organisms certainly within the decade, possibly within half that time. [It's like] changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by inserting a new piece of software. [But] it would be more difficult in other kinds of cells, which have enzymes to snip the DNA of invader," commented Craig Venter.

The breakthrough was met by the scientific community with both excitement and unease because some have pointed out "the limits of science and the inevitable fears about playing god, as well as raising the spectre that this technology could one day be abused to create a new generation of bio weapons."

Amidst all these, Venter shared that the project was in fact delayed for a significant amount of time because they reviewed its moral and ethical consequences.