'artificial life' breakthrough

Celebrity US scientist Craig Venter has built a synthetic chromosome using chemicals made in a laboratory, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported Saturday.

"We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before," he added.

The chromosome which Venter and his team has created is known as Mycoplasma laboratorium and, in the final step of the process, will be transplanted into a living cell where it should "take control," effectively becoming a new life form.

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