But several biologists said they believed that the laboratory technique used to birth it would soon be applied to other strains of bacteria with commercial potential.

WSJ: Scientists Create First Synthetic Cell

Packet switching got its name thanks to late British scientist Donald Davies who was creating a network that used this technique at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

BBC: Celebrating 40 years of the net

Even more radical was the invention, in 1978, of in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, the now-common technique in which egg and sperm meet in a laboratory petri dish and create an embryo that is then implanted in the would-be mother's womb.

CNN: Science led to gay families: Law should follow

In February this year Mark Swain of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and his colleagues reported that they had developed a new technique for calibrating data arriving at ordinary ground-based telescopes, allowing them to identify the components of an extrasolar atmosphere.

ECONOMIST: Is it time for a new approach to finding extraterrestrials?