Where No Genome Has Gone Before

This week, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — DARPA — announced its solicitation of abstracts for papers or topics and suggestions for discussion for its 100 Year Starship Study Symposium to be held in Orlando, Fla., this fall. Among the tracks to be covered at the conference is "Biology and Space Medicine," which DARPA says could include topics that run the gamut from human life suspension to "on-scene (end of journey) spawning from genetic material." Popular Science's Rebecca Boyle says that while the "100-Year Starship is more like a thought experiment than a construction project," DARPA will award a contract in the ballpark of $500,000, "depending on several factors, for some kind of entity that will take over the next 100 years of planning." One proposal comes from Craig Venter. It says, according Popular Science that "fragmented human genomes could be shipped toward the stars and reconstructed upon their arrival, spawning the first interstellar citizens and avoiding the problems of long-distance space survival."