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77   `Creation of Life' Is More
     Slogan Than a Description
     The Washington Post   Saturday December 23, 1967

     "Creation of Life in the Test Tube" was the spectacular headline
of a science news story that broke ten days ago.  The occasion was a
publication in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences by
Prof. Arthur Kornberg of Stanford's Department of Biochemistry and his
colleagues, Drs.Mehran Goulian and Robert L. Sinsheimer.  This reported
their work on the "in vitro replication of the DNA of Phi-X-174,"
which is a simple virus containing only six genes.

     It is just that simplicity that makes Phi-X-174 an attractive
model system for genetic chemistry: higher animals, including man,
would be some million times more complex.  But even the simple virus
has in it the imprint of eons of cosmic evolution, being one of an 
innumerable variety of DNA molecules that now populate the earth.

     It is one of the delights of a scientific education to be able to
assimilate the endless technicalities of this line of work and then
appreciate the elegance and the grandeur of the thinking that went
into it as well as the meticulous drudgery of preparing for the 
crucial experiments. The headline suggests a sudden breakthrough.  In
fact, Dr. Kornberg had consolidated the essential advances over 10
years with the extraction of the crucial enzyme, DNA replicase.

     Since that time, the present accomplishment has been clearly
in sight, though surprisingly elusive until some ancillary, but fatal
gaps in scientific understanding could be filled.  One of the most
important of these was the action of another enzyme, a DNA "ligase,"
which can heal small nicks in the growing DNA standard and seal off
the finishing touches on the complete molecule.

     All told, the experimental replication of DNA stands as one of
the outstanding intellectual edifices of the 20th century, quite 
apart from the philosophical and human impact of the accomplishment.
Dr. Kornberg would, however, be the first to point out that "creation
of life" is a slogan rather than a thoughtful characterization:
"I really don't think my colleagues and I have ever discussed whether
or not this is a living molecule that we have created."  To many 
readers, however, "creation of life" carries such a load of emotional
and theologist impact that this deserves to be clarified.

     Replication is an elegant way to say "copying."  The propagation
of life must provide for the copying of genetic information to pass
similar copies to many offspring.  The kernel of Dr. Kornberg's 
experiment was to conduct the copying of an existing virus DNA in the 
test tube under well-defined conditions.

     The process has long been known to occur within the cell.  The
whole point of the experimental work is to understand how the 
replication process works, and this has been corroborated by being 
emulated in the test tube with materials extracted and purified from 
cells.

     The leap in understanding is comparable to man's discovery that
wheat could be "created" by planting the right seed in the ground. But
now our understanding is at a molecular level, almost as far as human
thought can be expected to reach and one that does show new ways to
modify the genetic process.

     If, through our understanding of DNA chemistry, we "create" new
kinds of DNA molecules, we then have very powerful new tools for
designing new viruses and other organisms which could be of enormous
value in fighting the scourges of life.  Before we react reflexly to
the idea of "tampering with genes," we ought to remember that the
history of human civilization runs parallel with unremitting effort
at controlling biological evolution in the guise of the domestication
of crop plants, animals and, in the sense, man himself.

     It is in this century that we have lost the comfort of blind   
ignorance: we are beginning to use our intelligence to understand what
we are doing.

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