Medary.com

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways - in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life - made from the basic chemicals in DNA - may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.