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Scientists Attempting to Create Simple Life Form
derubergeek writes "The Washington Post is reporting on an apparently credible project to create a simple life form in a petri dish. The goal is two-fold: 1) to actually create a unique life form essentially from scratch and (more importantly) 2) to extensively analyze and model the entire biology of this critter. Exciting and scary at the same time. From the article, it sounds as if they are quite wary of their project and fascinated at the same time. I usually refer to that sensation as 'That little voice that I should have listened to...'" There's also a NY Times article.
As they say that they're going to do it in a "petri dish" I assume that we will not see Frankenstein, but rather Flubber.
I though that this has been done part-way in simulations of earths early atmosphere using electic discharges. At least they made aminoacids that way (I think they did that).
No they haven't! Miller and Urey made amino acids. That's a very long way from creating even the simplest entity anyone would consider alive.
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
And if the scientists in question are not interested in those areas? What do you suggest - making it illegal to fund "non-important" science? Who would have the say on what is important? And how exactly do you then stop those affected scientists from continuing their work at a university in another country, rather than toeing to the line and doing 'important' stuff? The science community is by it's nature a pretty mobile bunch of people; it's built into the system that spending time at other universities and other countries is seen as a good thing and a boon to one's career.
This is a parallel to those advocating the joining of competing open-source projects. It won't work to mandate what people work with there, and it won't work here. In both cases, people are working on what they do (or financing the work) because they find it fascinating and important, and no matter what others say they should be doing they will continue doing what they do.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Call me crazy, but I see a parallel here with this. - Taking an existing, known format and minimising it as far as possible. Heck - even the number returned by the code is relevant.
Insert witty sig about inserting witty sig here, here.
I've had asked this question before but never received a good answer.
If man creates a new life form by definition man is the "Creator" of that life form. If somehow in a distance future man builds on this knowledge and creates an intelligent life form, from scratch, would man be it's "Creator"? If so, could one say that man is it's God?
This was touched upon in the Deep Space 9 trek series. The Dominan (sp?) created two life forms and the life forms acknowledged their "Creators" as their God.
Who knows?
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
No one ever brings these [moral] arguments up in chemistry, or physics, or math
I think Einstein would have disagreed with you.
Start from the real beginning and try to create the basic building blocks with silicon instead of carbon. That would be a real accomplishment. (No, not silicone. Those life forms are already all over Hollywood.)
This experiment is very exciting for many reasons, but the modeling aspects alone make it worth while. Just following the up and down regulation of thousands of genes is an overwhelming burden. Modeling/visualizing the entire cell network with the normal complement of entities would be fantastically difficult. Simplification through gene reduction is a fundamentally important first step.
Hmmm... a lot of trees will die if Boehringer Mannheim tries to print this one out (a la biochemical pathways).
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
An excellent overview of minimum-gene-set research is here...
This is the same as the premise of the science fiction book by Greg Bear Blood Music .
In which a researcher inadvertently creates sentient cells. But more importantly, the book describes a near future in which biological research outpaces computer research and that it spawns an entire "Gene Valley" type area as opposed to a "Silicon Valley". With organisms being manufactured to do just what the article describes -- Create hydrogen, purify air etc. Except the researcher decides to inject himself with his cells to "save them" and standard Sci-Fi goodness ensues.
The hypothesis that "chemistry explains all of life" is nearly universal in science, yet is not fully proven yet (though I believe it). The ultimate test of the chemistry hypothesis is be to construct life from inert chemicals off the shelf. The closest one got was the constuction of a polio virus from regeants earlier this year. The virus appeared viable, but was about a thousand times less potent than its natural version. The simplest life form, as described in this article, is about 20-50 times more complicated than a virus in terms of genes and chemicals (proteins, sugars, others).
The alternative hypothesis is "neo-vitalism" or that is some mysterious substance or force outside of pure chemistry. This was the prevailing hypothesis until well into the 19th century. But it keeps on reappearing in more "scientific" forms today. One statement is the "only living material can produce living matter", even though you can fully explain all the chemistry, physics, and genetics. Another version callled "morphogensis" is that there are "patterns" in lving matter that are transmitted from ancestor to descendent. Yet another version, championed by physicist Roger Penrose is that there is secret unknown physics involved (clarification: he specificiation is attributing human consciousness to a new form of quantum interaction). Still another variation is "holism" or "emergism" which states the totally is greater than the sum of the parts, i.e. a reductionistic explanation is necessarily incomplete.
Note the relation of life to matter is a very old philosophical problem. The ancient Greek story of Pygmalian, the medival Golem, and the 186 year old Frankenstein novel all addressed this issue.
An auxilary problem is artificial intelligence. Its seem obvious that this can be done by us computer geeks. But 55 years of effort have had disappointing results. Some people use similar arguments against artificial life against artificial intelligence.
As I responded to another post, I'm unsure as to how much of the actual cell structure (aside from the membrane) will remain...i.e., nucleus, mytochondria, etc..
I'm viewing it as 'creating life' in the sense that someone who 'creates software' doesn't actually build the computer from sand, program the O/S in machine, and design & implement a compiler (at least not typically - I have a handful of friends who always seem to sidetrack themselves down that path...).
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
You think morality and ethics are not brought up in physics? Can you say nuclear bomb? Chemistry? Can you say nerve gas? Just because people weren't able to stop them from being made/used doesn't make the use right... the same goes for biology. Ethics and ethical debate has a place in all human endeavors (even when humans may not be involved in the results).
Your "saving lives" comment is meaningless without ethics... If there are no ethics, why do you want to "save lives"? With no ethics, saving lives is a "so what, who cares, it doesn't help me right here, right now" proposition.
One thing that small organisms do very well is to swap genes. So what if it escapes, borrows some missing/interesting genes from a passing E. Coli ?
GM crops have been found to swap genes with plants that they weren't supposed to.
To which the scientist promptly replied with a grumble, and returned to his colleagues on Earth.
"God's playing hardball. Now we need our own universe," the scientist said.
So the greatest minds on the planet assembled and laid the plans for a great supercollider in space, so powerful that a quantum bubble might miraculously explode in another big bang.
They toiled for 5 days, and 5 nights, and at last on the 6th their collider was complete. In the heavens above them their collider glittered in the moonlight like a twinkling star.
With great fanfare the switch was thrown, and within minutes a new universe was born in an orthogonal dimension to our own universe.
And on the 7th day, they rested.
I doubt we are going to be pumping out thousands of lifeforms as big as humans just for the hell of it. Why not produce lifeforms that can (for example) consume greenhouse gasses and produce energy? That would certainly reduce the strain on the environment.
You mean like the special breeds of rats and mice that we use in labratories? Already been done, essentially.
Didn't happen. Prove that this has happened.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Your comment is a particularly stupid one that not only shows a lack of knowledge on the field of science, but of the personalities of human beings. There is no overlord scientific authority that directs what each and every scientist in the world should be working on. Science is very much an individual pursuit. You learn about what you are interested in or what you accidentally discover. A good scientist is a highly motivated scientist, not one forced to work on a project he/she has very little interest in.
We have plenty of scientists working on both AIDS and Cancer. If we were to stop all other pursuits until all disease were eradicated our overall standard of living would be much lower due to a lack of innovation in every other field. I suppose just because there's still rabies in the world you think that no scientist should be working on fuel cells, or just because a cure for lupus has been found no one should care a rats ass about developing more efficent supply chain methods...etc.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Why not produce lifeforms that can (for example) consume greenhouse gasses and produce energy? That would certainly reduce the strain on the environment.
Do we really know what the long-term consequences of releasing such organisms into our ecosystem would be? Even if they are not deliberately released, if they are widely used, they're gonna get out sooner or later. Even if they're somehow designed to die outside the lab or CO2 processing plant, there's still the distinct possibility of a mutated strain that bypasses those controls.
Who knows? Create a CO2 eating microbe today...in five hundred years, or even fifty, 90% of the Earth's plant life may end up dead for lack of CO2 because these little buggers have multiplied and spread out of control.
The Earth is an incredibly complex, carefully balanced system. Trying to engineer it too excessively when we're really not sure at all what we're doing could backfire in a big way.
DennyK
Why not produce lifeforms that can (for example) consume greenhouse gasses and produce energy?
I'm not in principle opposed to the idea. But then again, the people who will be coding the DNA are the same people who can't check IIS buffers for overruns.
I grew up in Mississippi. About 100 years ago, everyone was worried about soil erosion. Somebody came up with a great idea to prevent erosion: introduce a vine from Asia that had really stubborn roots and could hold soil down. The vine? Kudzu. Now the whole deep South is overrun with the damn stuff and they can't get rid of it. The effects of the introduction on the ecosystem were much broader than anyone had anticipated. Something tells me that releasing a life form that eats greenhouse gases would have even greater effects.
All's true that is mistrusted
This is actually kind of ironic. Our understanding of physics (general relativity and quantum mechanics, and all the floppy connective bits we've tried to stick in between) breaks down rather badly around singularities--black holes (if they exist). If anything, these protesters should be cheering the existence of black holes. They're sort of like God's practical joke on physicists.
~Idarubicin
That wouldn't of really be more successful, though. If right now, they live (usually) harmlessly in the urinary track of every human, then that is a huge habitat. If they start killing off the human race in a plague of bloody toilet water, then they will drastically reduce their habitat, perhaps even killing off so many hosts that they will no longer be spread.
Think about it, as a species which is better, small pox or the common cold?
(and yes, I know that viruses are not life, therefore not "species" yadda yadda yadda, but the example still holds)
omnia tua castra sunt nobis