Researchers are on the brink of producing the world’s new artificial life form. A DNA researcher, Craig Venter has constructed an entirely synthetic chromosome, a genes sequence and plans to insert it in a surviving cell.

If he succeeds he and his group will be the first to create an almost entirely new life form in the world.

Researchers hope the discovery will lead to developments in bio-engineering to aid deal with climatic change, or supply alternative sources of energy.

It will also incite widespread argumentation about the moral principles of "playing God" by producing new species.

Mr. Venter stated that the Guardian that making the new life structure would be a crucial philosophic footstep in the history of human form.

“We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before,” Mr. Venter said.

Mr. Venter’s group is the first to generate an artificial chromosome. It is 381 genes long and has been called ‘Mycoplasma laboratorium’. The researchers expect to place it in to another bacterium cell to produce the artificial life.

The resulting bacterium will be dependent on the particles of the host cell to replicate, but will otherwise be entirely artificial.

Mr. Venter provoked disagreement when he began finding out the human genome for commercial purposes, in opposition with the Human Genome Project.