First synthetic virus created

BBC ^ | July 11, 2000 | Dr David Whitehouse

[AndrewC]

Now, is this the time to bring up existence?

[Nebullis]

Things held axiomatically are an expression of the fundamental structure of our brains. What is is.

[AndrewC]

Things held axiomatically are an expression of the fundamental structure of our brains.

Atheists and believers are therefore fundamentally structurally different. Must be a gene.

[Nebullis]

Atheists and believers are therefore fundamentally structurally different.

Atheists and believers (in God) hold to different assertions, these are axioms not universally held.

Must be a gene.

Why must it be a gene?

[gore3000]

By comparison, whipping up the sequence of the genome would be nothing compared to getting a cell up and running into which the packaged genome would be popped.

It is also questionable whether a cell which was an exact copy of a living cell would be alive, would function. Life comes from life.

[gore3000]

Consider also that the smallest prokaryote genome is maybe twice as large as the pox virus.

Not correct. The smallest free living organisms known are the mycoplasmas. These are parasitic bacteria that cause many diseases. The smallest have about 500 genes and a genome of some 600,000 base pairs of DNA:

MYCOPLASMAS
~300 nm Ø (cell membrane: 8 nm)
Solvent content: 60-70%
DNA (genome size: 600 - 1,300 kbp)
400 ribosomes
10,000 RNA molecules
50,000 protein molecules
400,000,000 water/solute molecules
From: Structural Studies on Single Particles and Biomelecules

Not nearly so simple. A cell has to do quite a lot to replicate and nourish itself.

[gore3000]

The argument used to be that you can't create life from non-life...

Viruses are not alive, they do not replicate, essentially they are mutational agents which destroy the proper working of an organism.

[aruanan]

It is also questionable whether a cell which was an exact copy of a living cell would be alive, would function. Life comes from life.

If it were an exact copy it would have ongoing, biologically-controlled, chemical reactions. In that case, it would be alive. "Alive" is just another name for "complex, self-sustained, directed, interactive assemblage of chemical reactions". If someone were able to create such a cell, it would still be an example of life coming from life, just the means of accomplishing it would be a little different.

[Nebullis]

If someone were able to create such a cell, it would still be an example of life coming from life, just the means of accomplishing it would be a little different.

The absurd reduction of this argument is that the very idea for creating life in the lab would come from other life and therefore one continues to claim life did not come from non-life. It's too silly. As I said above, the philosophical issue gets squeezed from a square to a round hole and voila, the argument never changes.

[aruanan]

The absurd reduction of this argument is that the very idea for creating life in the lab would come from other life and therefore one continues to claim life did not come from non-life. It's too silly. As I said above, the philosophical issue gets squeezed from a square to a round hole and voila, the argument never changes.

Look at what I was saying. Look at what I was responding to. Look at what you said and see the disjoint. Every day you (or a butcher) are constantly turning life into non-life, then into its non-living chemical constituents, and then reassembling them and reincorporating them into life. It's called nutrition. If someone were able, somehow, to exteriorize these processes and to whip up a fully functioning cell from scratch, it would truly be life coming from life (as I defined life as an ongoing self-sustained chemical process). It just wouldn’t be in the mode of little Sam coming as the result of a union between Sam and Fran. It would not be, as some would wish, proof that life originally also had to come from life. It would also emphatically not be an example of life arising spontaneously from non-living materials but as the result of deliberate engineering by high technology. However, this also, regardless of what some would wish, would not constitute proof that life on Earth was originally initiated by similar (or higher) levels of molecular engineering, whatever the apparent time scale involved.

In a similar way to the quibbling about the difference between Life and "life", people, usually environmentalists and other people generally not given to thought, often decry chemical engineering and industrial-strength chemical factories making vitamins (and other chemicals necessary for life, whether individual or societal), saying that the gentle peace of plants is better, more "natural". Nope. We simply do outside our own bodies and for our own purposes what plants do inside their "bodies" and for their own "purposes". Sure, the means by which plants synthesize vitamins and other phytochemicals are a bit more elegant in that they are able to make them at physiological temperatures and pressures, but such processes are, at present, too inconvenient for producing mass quantities. The end product, though, is the same. Ascorbic acid made in an orange is no different from ascorbic acid made in a factory. They are chemically identical. One's body doesn't know the difference. There are no mysterious life vibrations or forces or essences that are ingested with the vitamin C from oranges that give it its potency.

[Nebullis]

Gore3000 makes the point that a life, whipped up in the laboratory, would not function because "Life comes from life."

You say it can function, but call it life coming from life--by a little different means.

I tried to point out (to no avail!) that the "different means" effectively destroys, by argument, any possibility of creating life in the laboratory from nonlife.

Next, you give reasons why you want to make this particular distinction. Because nothing should be implied about origins of life or life without an intelligent designer. If I may be so bold as to suggest that there is a disjoint in your response, it's that it ignores the issue that I suspect Gore3000 was speaking to, namely that there is something special to life, more than the combination of its laboratory components, that humans aren't given to reproduce.

Whether or not you want it or not, thoughts about the fundamental idea of what life are changing.

[aruanan]

Next, you give reasons why you want to make this particular distinction. Because nothing should be implied about origins of life or life without an intelligent designer.

Who said anything about "nothing should be implied"?

If I may be so bold as to suggest that there is a disjoint in your response, it's that it ignores the issue that I suspect Gore3000 was speaking to, namely that there is something special to life, more than the combination of its laboratory components, that humans aren't given to reproduce.

No disjoint. And I didn't ignore the issue since I stated plainly that biological life is an ongoing, self-sustained, self-directed assemblage of chemical reactions and that there is no essence beyond that (the allusion to the vitamin C vitalists) that makes it living. Though I should say that there has been observed no essence or anything beyond the physico/chemical properties necessary for the maintenance of life. In many cases, one can suspend the chemical processes by low temperatures (somewhat below the freezing temperature of water, or in a -80C freezer, or in a liquid nitrogen tank) and start them up again and the particular 'life' go on as before. That this is more easily accomplished in simple (bacteria, yeast, or cell culture) rather than complex organisms or in coldblooded (small insects, amphibians, and fish) rather than in mammals doesn't mean that the biological activity of the more complex and/or mammalian is sustained by some pervading "life force", just that increasing systemic complexity is more easily irreparably disrupted (this is why you can freeze HeLa cells in liquid nitrogen and revive them but not do the same for Henrietta from which they originally came, though people hope to be able to do that for Ted Williams some day).

Whether or not you want it or not, thoughts about the fundamental idea of what life [is] are changing.

And few are in a better position than I to appreciate this.

[Nebullis]

Who said anything about "nothing should be implied"?

Merely your emphatic statements about what it does not imply about origin of life.

And I didn't ignore the issue since I stated plainly that biological life is an ongoing, self-sustained, self-directed assemblage of chemical reactions and that there is no essence beyond that (the allusion to the vitamin C vitalists) that makes it living.

Yes, but at issue here is starting that ongoing, self-sustained, etc. in the laboratory. That is, breaking the continuity of a previous chain of being and starting a new one. And a disagreement about the newness of this life is not a disconnect.

You bring up some excellent tangents such as nutrition and suspension of life which contribute to the overall difficulty of exactly defining life. BTW, human cells are just as easy to freeze as fish, or whatever. It's just more difficult to freeze larger, whole organisms. But I think you'll agree with me that this is a technical complication and not a theoretical one.

And few are in a better position than I to appreciate this.

Now you have me curious! Care to expand?

[Nebullis]

e.g. The whole Henrietta Lacks could have been frozen at an early developmental stage.

[gore3000]

If it were an exact copy it would have ongoing, biologically-controlled, chemical reactions. In that case, it would be alive. "Alive" is just another name for "complex, self-sustained, directed, interactive assemblage of chemical reactions". If someone were able to create such a cell, it would still be an example of life coming from life, just the means of accomplishing it would be a little different.

My understanding of 'exact copy' is a bit different from yours. I don't think that copying the exact structure of say a bacteria would make it work. You gave the example of freezing bacteria and their starting up again after unfreezing. I have heard they are doing that with humans - for brain operations I believe, instead of giving them anesthesia. People come back out of it like nothing after they are unfrozen. However the question is - and I do not think there is a scientific answer for it yet - were just the chemical processes stopped? And why did they start again?

In short my view is that life is more than a chemical process and just a string of DNA. I think that making an exact copy would be like making a copy of a car. It can be perfect, but still someone has to turn the engine to make it go. For example, what is the difference in an organism's physical nature one minute before death and one minute after? I think that difference is what we call life. I think this is why we have a long chain of being which has never been interrupted from one generation to the next.

[gore3000]

Yes, but at issue here is starting that ongoing, self-sustained, etc. in the laboratory. That is, breaking the continuity of a previous chain of being and starting a new one. And a disagreement about the newness of this life is not a disconnect.

I think that is the issue with this experiment. Many scientists believe that viruses are not really live things, that they are just essentially chemicals which are able to destroy a certain part of a gene and make it mutate in a hurtful way to the organism.