From Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, Cardiff University
Craig Venter’s successful implantation of a digitally determined genome sequence into a bacterium has been widely reported (29 May, p 6). Now imagine a future where a successor to Venter is able to digitally reconstruct a set of the best possible sequences of human genomes and incorporate them, in pieces, into bacteria that could autonomously reproduce the sequences.
If these bacteria were then launched into space, the fragmented genome could be reassembled on countless habitable planets in the galaxy. This would be a process similar to that outlined in the theory of directed panspermia proposed in 1973 by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel (Icarus, vol 19, p 341).
Carried on comets, these bacteria could travel from one planetary system to the next, where the genome could reproduce. The legacy of human life could then be thought to have been given an eternal existence in the cosmos.
Cardiff, UK
