With last week’s announcement of the “chemical synthesis of a living organism,” what Craig Venter and his colleagues have achieved is not so much a “synthesis of life” as a semi-synthetic recreation of what we currently deem life to be, says Phillip Ball, consultant editor for Nature.

“‘Life’ in biology, rather like ‘force’ in physics, is a term carried over from a time when scientists thought quite differently, when it served as a makeshift bridge over the inexplicable,” he said.

“In the post-genomics era, our ideas of where the real business of life resides are shifting again. We are moving away from a linear “code” and towards something altogether more abstract, emergent and entangled.

“So in marking yet another deepening appreciation of how life operates, the latest ‘synthesis of life’ seems likely to repeat the historical template.”