The Office of Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) of the Pentagon, within the framework of the budget for fiscal 2011, intends to allocate six million dollars for the implementation of a project to create artificial living beings. It is assumed that these organisms will be able to live almost forever, unless it is decided that it is time for them to die
The new project that DARPA plans to create will be called BioDesign. According to the management, the project will use the latest advances in biotechnology, which will create living and breathable creatures with "certain biological qualities." It is not specified whether the artificial organism will be multicellular, but it is emphasized that its cells will have resistance to the aging and death processes. Cancer cells, for example, have similar properties.
Markers will be introduced into the DNA of artificial organisms, allowing it to be uniquely identified. DARPA also intends to provide for a "cellular switch", the activation of which will lead to the immediate death of the organism. How this is planned to be implemented is still unknown.
In addition, DARPA intends to invest $ 20 million in the development of synthetic biology and $ 7.5 million in research on the analysis and modification of the genome.
According to David Fitch, professor of biology at New York University, DARPA intends to take a different approach to evolution, presenting it not as a chain of random changes, but as a single directional action.
A description of BioDesign can be found on page 265 of DARPA's 522-page FY11 Budget Proposal. This is reported by Lenta.ru with reference to Wired.