Posted on 08/20/2007 5:05:29 AM PDT by laotzu
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 light 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. One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.
Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.
His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.
"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.
In Gainesville, Fla., Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.
Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.
"When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
The last sentence is the kicker here - Not in our wildest imagination.
In MY wildest imagination I see these man made things getting free and creating widespread sickness, mutations to life forms that cause great hardship on mankind. Unlike nuclear weapons which once can see with the naked eye, microbes can be carried aloft and spread widely. They can’t be seen with the naked eye.
I don’t trust “scientists” who are actually entrepreneurs looking to patent the first artificial life form and make billions of dollars.
This reminds me of the groups who want to try to fire rockets that spread billions of little mirrors to control global warming - In MY wildest imagination I see that going horribly wrong as well.
This is truly scary!
Where have we heard this before? (computers, nanotech, biotech....)
Life being created by highly Intelligent Designers. Who knew such a thing was possible?
Alternate source:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883668/posts
Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.
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Well if we don’t create monsters someone else will. At least they’ll be American monsters. Maybe the monsters will work for low wages.
Apologies. I did not mean to steal your posts thunder.
Aren’t we all suppose to be dead from global warming in 10 years?
“Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light 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.”
Life being created by highly Intelligent Designers. Who knew such a thing was possible?
THIS IS OBVIOUSLY IMPOSSIBLE, WE ALL KNOW IT REQUIRES MILLIONS OF YEARS OF TIME, MUTATIONS AND NATURAL SELECTION AS THE ONLY WAY TO GET LIFE.....
SILLY WABBITS....
Scary stuff.
Oh? Is that all?
That kind of reminds me of the old line on how to save a million dollars. First, get a million dollars.
The whole premise seems very arrogant of these scientists, and should they ever make something life-like, I'm not sure what purpose it would serve.
... doing the jobs americans wouldn’t do :)
If there was a god - wouldn’t he (or she) be quite pleased to have some guys around trying to follow his (or her)steps ?
Why would that please Him?
Historically speaking, man has taken every thing that he has discovered and twisted it into something bad. So just why do you think God would be pleased at this?
I’m offended!! Everyone knows there’s no such thing as Intelligent Design!! [scoffs] It will take millions of years of evolution for these things to develop artificial life, everyone knows that! /libbie rant off
Seriously, though, this is bad. This is VERY bad. God is pretty patient, but I’m wondering how much longer He’s going to let this kind of thing go on!
One of the best arguments for Darwinian biology is that natural selection can be caused to operate in the laboratory (microbial resistance). So if intelligent design can be reproduced by experiment, what does this prove?
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