Within fifty to a hundred years, a new class of organisms is likely to emerge.

These organisms will be artificial in the sense that they will originally be designed by humans. However, they will reproduce, and will evolve into something other than their initial form; they will be “alive” under any reasonable definition of the word. these organisms will evolve in a fundamentally different manner than contemporary biological organisms, since their reproduction will be under at least partial conscious control, giving it a Lamarckian component.

J. Doyne Farmer and Alletta  d’A Belin

Artificial Life II. Edited by Christopher G. Langton, Charles Taylor, J. Doyne Farmer and Steen Rasmussen.

Santa Fe Institute in the Science of Complexity.