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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.
This has already been done.
To ensure safety, Smith and Venter said the cell will be deliberately hobbled to render it incapable of infecting people; it also will be strictly confined, and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the environment.
hmmm...where have I heard this before? Something to do with female dinosaurs and frog DNA.
They are gonna create a Slashdot Moderator From Scratch.
They are called Sea Monkeys!
...of a 'simple lifeform'. It lives in the white house...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
The project will begin with M. genitalium, a minuscule organism that lives in the genital tracts of people and may cause or contribute to some cases of urethritis, an inflammation of the urethra. The scientists will remove all genetic material from the organism, then synthesize an artificial string of genetic material, resembling a naturally occurring chromosome, that they hope will contain the minimum number of M. genitalium genes needed to sustain life. The artificial chromosome will be inserted into the hollowed-out cell, which will then be tested for its ability to survive and reproduce.
They're taking an already extant organism, "hollowing it out" as it were, and seeing if it can live and reproduce normally with a series of increasingly customized (and minimal) genetic material. Not creating something from nothing.
If they had to choose a bacteria to do unpredictable and possible dangerous experimentation with, why did they choose one that is known to cause crotch-burn in humans?!
When I read the headline this morning I thought it was going to be entirely from scratch, but the article says that they're "just" (like it's not still amazing we can do this) going to take an existing organism, and strip it of most of its DNA until they get down to the bare minimum required to sustain life. So I don't know if I'd necessarily call it "creating" life, because it seems to be more of the same modifying existing life people have been doing for a while now.
If it/he/she survives, they should give it/him/her a name.
I vote for the name "spam"
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
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).
Amino acids are to life as a bolt is to a spaceshuttle, so no, they didn't do this yet.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
What will "Hello World" in DNA look like?
You are thinking of the Miller-Urey Experiment.
In the '50s they put some simple chemicals (methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water) in a sealed vessel and added energy (as electrical discharges). They found about 2% of the material formed amino acids.
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
Frankenstein was a story. It was fiction. And so was Jurassic Park, and so was Gattaca. I won't comment on the Bible here, although my view of that book is probably pretty clear from the context
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
No, you're the only one to whom it seems incredibly foolish. Well, okay, you and a bunch of other fools.
As I said in another post, no one raises these objections with physics, or chemistry, or math, despite things like, oh, say, the atomic bomb. All scientific research is potentially dangerous. But stopping research because of some vague fear, or some pseudo-philosophical-religious claptrap like "some things are better off left alone" (what things exactly? Be specific) would leave us in the Dark Ages.
Jellyfish don't do scientific research. No jellyfish has ever built an atomic bomb, or engineered a dangerous virus, true. But would you rather be a jellyfish, or a human being?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The New England Journal of Evil
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.
Star Thistle is commonly found in California fields only it's not native and it wasn't put there on purpose. It has displaced the local grasses almost completely in some areas. This is only one of thousands of examples of non-native species that have infested new (to them) environments.
All environments will be new to this critter. That makes the "scary" part, to me anyway, the fact that if this were to escape and survive it would displace something else with absolutely unknown consequences. We are completely dependant on our environment's biology for breathable air and edible food so it's pretty damn important that we don't accidentally (no one would even _consider_ doing it purposely, would they?) introduce some species that will screw it up.
I'm not saying we shouldn't experiment. I'm just saying that everyone should have a healthy dose of fear over this particular kind of experiment.
TW
The minimum number of genes required for an organism to survive has been a topic of interest for several years. An excellent semi-technical overview of this effort was produced by The National Academy of Sciences...
There are two basic approaches to medical research. The first is the "shotgun" approach -- throw a bunch of chemicals at a disease and find one that stops the disease process without killing the patient. This approach has led to some great successes over the last century or so, but the problem is, as far as we can tell, we've just about discovered everything we're going to discover by this method. The easy stuff has been done.
The other approach, the molecular approach, is to figure out how life works -- and, of great interest from the medical applications point of view, how it goes wrong -- from the ground up, and try to use that knowledge to build new treatments. That's what these guys are doing. I can almost guarantee you that when a cure for cancer or AIDS is found, it will come from this approach.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.
The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let's say we have a man making contest." To which the scientist replied, "OK, great!"
But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."
The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
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.
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.
We are meddling with forces we do not comprehend,
Yes. The technical name for such meddling is "science".
It's an ethical problem. For very religious people such experiments would equal to the most arrogant attempt for humans recreating the Creation. Even if it is inside a lab, such event would leave a huge teological hole on one of the most canonical religious doctrines: that life is somehow "different" from other physical phenomena and could only be created in very exceptional circumstances by an omnipotent being.
Since the XIX century, we have seen how the crumbling of this "truth" is painfully received among several religions. Since Darwin and Pasteur, every step that closes nears the biotic and anabiotic world is not easy for believers. Many dogmas put living beings in a special place. Besides, humans are put in a more special place. However, the rising of Evolutionism blurred the human-living beings division. Meanwhile while we got closer and closer to the abiotic world, no one could ever mix up inorganic components and bring out an alien crawling outta the lab. So many creationists hang to this last frontier and consider it as "proof" that Life was created by someone. However the new experiments may blur this division to the impossible.
The paper you talk about (Cello, Paul and Wimmer, Science 297: 1016-1018) describes the de novo synthesis of Poliovirus. The authors used polymerases in a cell-free system to translate synthetic cDNA derived from the entire polio genome. The synthetic virus did not differ significantly from the wild-type phenotype (i.e., it was not a "1000 times less potent"). Admittedly, the polymerases used were ultimately of biological origin; however there was no force vital that hindered the synthetic poliovirus. Article specifically states that vitalism was shattered, and that poliovirus is "a chemical with a life cycle". Quo vadis, neovitalism?
And the rest of your troll goes downhill from there. "Life begets life" dates back to the mid-19th century, and is an empirical observation that countered hypotheses like maggots spontaneously arising from rotting meat.
Morphogenesis is a genuine scientific concept, but there is nothing mysterious about it. These "patterns" you speak of, they sound strangely like "genes", don't they? Hmm.
I could find no reference to Penrose and a quantum description of human consciousness. This sounds bogus to me, but even if he did seriously make that claim, human consciousness is in no way a prerequisite for life. A bacterium or an earthworm has no human consciousness.
And finally emergism. Certainly, in living organisms, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The whole can replicate, while the parts cannot. Living organisms are emergent systems, but there is nothing mysterious about emergent systems per se.
The relation of life to matter is indeed an old philosophical problem. My own religion (Hinduism) has some very interesting perspectives on the divisions between mind, matter and spirit. However this has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
I am not personally qualified to talk about AI and whether are not it is feasible. However, judging from the rest of your post, I doubt your competence in that field of human endeavor as well.
My other sig is also a
This is a wonderful new field of science that has incredible potential for human advancement. It also has incredible potential for misuse and unethical behavior.
Heck, forget honest mistakes made by intelligent, thoughtful, ethical scientists; forget unethical misuses slowly plotted by glacial corporations and governments. What I'm worried about is N years after that, when the biology script kiddies swing into action.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
The Miller-Urey experiment does show that random energy into a specific set of simple chemicals can yield amino acids.
However, it did not produce all amino acids required for life as we know it. Moreover, there is no known chemical pathway to go from a bunch of amino acids to DNA/RNA. Plus there is also significant debate about whether the initial atmosphere they began with existed on Earth at the time of the origins of life.
Other researchers have suggested that inoganic forms of proto-life (crystal growth) may have had a role in the catalysis of organic chemicals to actually get to something leading to RNA/DNA.
I'm not saying that there is anything particularly magic about the formation of life, just that Miller-Urey is a very small part of a very big question.
Actually, according to a Catholic theologian when asked about this, to "play God" you would have to invent the rules then sit back and watch what happens within the rules. What we do is try to figure out what the rules are and then do everything we can within them. So trying to create life within the rules that we've got is not "plyaing God" but "playing Man".
Nope, no sig