I think this is pretty big news: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/20/artificial.life.ap/index.html but everyone is distracted by the "wide stance" Craig affair. How do they make artificial life? The scientists are taking a very clever approach by leveraging nature: "We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.