Artificial Cell: The Impact Of Synthesis Technology On Human Beings

Life is a progress of an individual’s reactions, evaluations, and growths. It can self-reproduce, self-repair, and self-manipulation. Furthermore, it has to have its own thinking ability, not controlled by program coding instruction. Not long ago, a new trend of biological research came out, which is Artificial Life and Artificial Cell. Lots of scientists researched about how a life can be manufactured by humans. The first fundamental components scientists discovered was cells. We are all constituted by trillions of varieties of cells, and 23 pairs of chromosomes. Artificial cells are reorganized synthetic cell that contains the same functions as biological cells. In theory, scientists aren’t able to make new varieties of cell with nothing because the technology of making artificial cells are still in the stage of preliminary research. So, how are artificial cells created?

Scientists constructed many experiments and examined several varieties of cells to understand their functions in order to create a new variety of synthesized cells. It is a complex subject to construct artificial cells. Scientists know they contain many different DNAs and chromosomes, besides, each of them has a specific sequence. Firstly, after sciences fully understand what abilities and functions they have, scientists either rearrange or combine different cells together to create a new variant of synthetic cells, they need to remove some unnecessary parts and add better gene or chromosomes in order to make the cells more efficient. This step is not allowed to have any mistakes. As long as there are minor errors or a wrong pair of sequences, there could be worse consequences such as. They start to put instruction genes into synthetic cells instructing them what their goals are. Finally, scientists do trials on guinea pigs. Recently, a new synthetic cell was discovered. With the aim of saving people with artificial technology, I researched for “Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus”. Scientists created a non-contagious artificial virus that is able to stimulate the immune system to fight against cancer cells. Cancer cell can conceal themselves from the detection of our body’s immune system because our body cannot recognize it.

The reason why bodies cannot recognize it is cancer cell is constituted by the patient’s DNA, and the immune system would think it’s natural. Scientists have thought for lots of ways to kill cancer cells, but they were in the wrong direction. This kind of virus is built based on the Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus. Scientists combined manipulated Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus with some cancer or tumor cells proteins to motivate the immune system to detect and respond cancer cells. Furthermore, scientists want those combined viruses to create memory cells because they want those memory cells to have memories of fighting against those cancer cells. Then, when the body encounters the same cancer cells again, the artificial virus will be able to recognize them again and stimulates the immune system fight against those cancer cells. After the artificial virus is planted into a body, Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus will integrate with genetic materials of the host cell, and utilize the host cell’s resources to duplicate themselves.

Afterward, those new viruses created by the artificial virus keep taint other cells in the body. Then, the artificial viruses arouse the immune system by those engineered cancer or tumor cells proteins. However, when the viruses leave the host cells after they take resources from it, the host cells are killed. By using viruses that is able to multiply, more viruses can be transmitted through the body to respond to immune reactions. The advantage of artificial virus is it can decide the number of replication viruses. And the right number of artificial viruses can provide better healing results because when those viruses travel through a body, the right amount of virus can effectively enter every part of the body. An excessive or too little virus can affect the speed of body system processing. Also, the artificial virus is created by scientists. So, they could control the number of viruses. Scientists reorganized the genetic materials for the artificial virus, they took pathogen out of the original viruses and add bacterial protein inside in order to have the best function and make the virus not become a bad germ, and hurt the body again. The disadvantage is in the process of virus duplicating harms body because after they finished taking resources of the host cell, they kill it.

This process is called “cytolytic”. We don’t want cytolytic artificial viruses because we still want our healthy host cells to be alive after offering resources and nutrition. Second, if the artificial virus stays in the body without their nutrition source the certain cell would transform into cancer cells if not provided sufficient nutrients over a long period of time. This is because virus can adapt into better conditions to stay alive. This research might seem good to patients with cancer or diseases, but there are some hidden ethical issues. There are two unethical arguments that needs to be discussed. Firstly, if “Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus” become a universal medical technology in the future, everyone in the world can extend lifetime. Because as long as people spend money on treatment, artificial cells can heal diseases quickly. This will result in excessive world population, there won’t be enough oxygen, food supplement and resources for the whole world. It also influences us how the public evaluates the value of life. Now it is normal to cherish life and no one will intentionally hurt themselves or others, but when we acquire this technology, the value of life will drop dramatically, because if our body is damaged, it only needs to be replaced in the hospital. For example, everyone starts to take drugs, keep smoking, and when their body condition gets worse and have cancer or diseases, they only need to pay for new artificial viruses. Such a situation can lead to a decline in the quality of society, with people harming others and living life dangerously. According to the disadvantage and ethical issues, I figured out a solution that can fix the problems.

Due to the reason that there hasn’t been a researched and proved way to solve this problem, so, the solution is based on my cognition. First, we can change the synthetic materials. My purpose is we exchange cytolytic virus to “non-cytolytic” virus. (examples of “non-cytolytic” virus). Second, governments should set limits to regulate age groups or people with congenital diseases that can use this technology. For example, older people over the age of 65, or give some serious congenital diseases like amblyopia, blindness, disability, deafness, dumbness, or defects. The purpose is to not allow the spread of this technology, as this could potentially lead to the chaos mentioned. Recent research on the artificial virus has brought us more research results of using the artificial virus to save diseased people or cancer patients and extend lifetime. This research shows the artificial virus investigation can kill cancer cells, but they kill healthy cells in our body, too. Thus, it involves ethical issues a lot. However, they can all be solved by my reasonable solution like using different genetic materials and some limitations. So, I recommend this new technology continued research because it is not just about saving people, we can also do more research and development on it.