Scientists around world in race to create artificial life (announcement expected in 3-10 years)

The Times of India / AP ^ | August 20, 2007

[Stoat]

Scientists around world in race to create artificial life
20 Aug 2007, 0647 hrs IST,AP

WASHINGTON: Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

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.

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new life on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life: A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply; A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes; A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

[RetSignman]

[ “wet artificial life.” ]

Sorry, you mad scientists, but it’s already been created in the form of the democrat party.

[Nateman]

If one thinks of life as self replicating information, it already has been done: The computer virus. An accidental but intelligent design form of life

[driftdiver]

“”We aren’t smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened,” Szostak said.”

So what happens when they release some monster that ends up having unexpected consequences. Do they just claim it was a learning experience? Say they ‘make’ something that kills bugs in crops. Instead it starts eating crops and soon we have no wheat. What kinda freak egomaniacs are these clowns?

[rbg81]

Makes me think of movies like “28 Days Later”.

[freepertoo]

I think this is kinda funny because scientists claim that all the wonderous things we have (from our eyeballs to the Universe) came about as a result of chance...yet they have to work hard and steady to produce something like this...

[Candor7]

Men presume to be gods. But then who can blame them for wanting to life as long as Moses did. It has been done before.

[Tex Pete]

“Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years”Nothing like a precise time frame.

Hopefully, they’re holding their breaths.

[RightWhale]

The secret is not in the DNA but the cell walls, which would include the walls of any interior substructures. If they are intending to make simple cell walls out of a simple compound they will not make much progress. Their first cell should be a kind of ribosome.