Synthetic organisms engineered to use carbon dioxide as a raw material could help humans settle Mars one day, a prominent biologist says.

Generations of scientists, children and science fiction fans have grown up presuming that humanity’s first encounter with alien life will happen in a red sand dune on Mars, or in an enigmatic radio signal from some obscure star. But it could soon happen right here on Earth, according to a handful of chemists and biologists who are using the tools of modern genetics to try to generate the Frankensteinian spark that will jump the gap separating the inanimate and the animate. The day is coming, they say, when chemicals in a test tube will come to life.

A presidential commission has released a report that recommends White House level oversight of US research in synthetic biology – but it stops short of calling for new laws or changes to existing regulations that govern the nascent field, whether in university labs or do-it-yourselfers' garages.

A new way of using the genetic code has been created, allowing proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the creation of new or "improved" life forms incorporating these new materials into their tissue.

The U.S. military's research arm, Darpa, is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As synthetic biologists attempt to build artificial life forms, a CAD system has been developed to allow them to redesign the stuff of life much faster and more easily.

Around the world, several labs are drawing close to the threshold of a second genesis or the creation of an entirely new life form, an achievement that some would call one of the most profound scientific breakthroughs of all time.

A new, lab-created molecule that performs the essential function of life - self-replication - could shed light on the origin of all living things.

Scientists who seek to imitate living cells say they can't help but be perpetually dazzled by the genuine articles, their flexibility, their versatility, their childlike grandiosity. No matter what outrageous or fattening things we may ask our synthetic cells to do, scientists say, it's nothing compared with what cells already have done of their own accord, usually in the format of bacteria.

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.