Genetic Engineering and Abiogenesis

Scientists have been working adding "letters" to the language of the amazingly complex DNA molecule in a bacterium. Even the small steps they have taken have required a great deal of painstaking research. DNA is comprised of four letters, and they have convinced a bacterium to accept two additional letters that are alien to it. The eventual goal is to be able to have it pass along this information, and to trick bacteria into following the new instructions that have been given to it. Genetic engineering, a subject for some scary science fiction movies ("Oh, it's perfectly safe, we have limiting factors built in. Bwahahaha!"), has potential for improving life.



But some people cannot leave real science alone, and must extrapolate backwards to bring in abiogenesis. This is absurd even on the surface. Using educated people, existing organisms with their complex DNA (and not yet as advanced as living cells), science, technology and so on — and then say that the law of biogenesis could be violated by time, chance, mutations and random processes is like reading a book with a lame ending. It's best to use the Book that Bill Nye rejects, the one that has the necessary preconditions of human experience and tells us about the Creator, and drop the evolutionary presumptions.
Can genetic engineers—by building a bacterium that speaks an unearthly tongue—reenact ancient evolution in the laboratory? Have they demonstrated that evolutionary abiogenesis—life from non-life—really happened?

Genetic engineering has taken a giant leap forward. Nature reports Floyd Romesberg’s Scripps Research Team has coaxed a bacterium to incorporate a bit of foreign language into its DNA. Though this foreign word means nothing to the bacterium as yet, writing a meaningful instruction using the two new letters is the next step. Once that hurdle is overcome, genetic engineers may rewire microbes to build biological products like pharmaceuticals and biofuels. In so doing they are capitalizing on God’s great biological design seen in all life on earth.
You can read the rest at "New Letters for Life’s DNA Alphabet Build on God’s Design".