Synthetic Genome+Natural Cell=New Life?

Craig Venter has taken yet another step towards his goal of creating synthetic life forms. He's synthesized the genome of a microbe and then implanted that piece of DNA into a DNA-free cell of another species. And that...that thing...can grow and divide. It's hard to say whether this is "life from scratch," because the boundary between such a thing and ordinary life (and non-life) is actually blurry. For example, you could say that this is still a nature hybrid, because its DNA is based on the sequence of an existing species of bacteria. If Venter made up a sequence from scratch, maybe we'd have crossed to a new terrain. Anyway--this news just hit the wires thanks to an embargo break, so I don't have time to go into more detail. Joe Palca at NPR has posted his article on the subject. For background, please check out these stories I've written ...