The Los Alamos Bug

Kannappan writes "'You somehow have to forget everything you know about life', says Steen Rasmussen, a colleague of Norman Packard. Packard and his team are working on creating life artificially, nicknamed The Los Alamos bug (pdf). It will be created out of a molecule called Peptide Nucleic Acid(PNA), with a blend of three different factors crucial to life, viz. containment, heredity and metabolism. The researchers believe that the synthetic lives so created will have an enormous practical value in producing clean fuels, healing injured bodies and acting as tiny diagnosticians roaming our bodies."

Comments

Scientists need to stop playing God!

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who is slightly disturbed by this trend for scientists to attempt to usurp the powers of our Almighty Creator?

Does Man's arrogance know no bounds? Have Hiroshima, Genetically Modified corn, Global Warming and the Sasser Worm taught us NOTHING?

I think we need to do a bit more praying, and a bit less messing around in the laborotory trying to 'play God'.

Surely there should be a law against creating artificial life forms when we have NO WAY of knowing what effect they will have when they break out of the lab?

Re:Scientists need to stop playing God!

[stoneymonster]

Have the invention of antibiotics, modern farming techniques, medical diagnostic imaging, genetic therapy, high-speed communications, transportation, etc. taught us nothing? Man should spend more time being dirt farmers than trying to improve his own lot in the universe.

Focus on Artificial life

[saurabhdutta]

My thoughts are that wont it be better to focus efforts for building artificial life on increasing computational intelligence. Seriously... what good the creation of a bug do to humanity? If the same brainpower is chanellised into creating intelligent machines, the benefit humanity gains, is immense.

Re:Source of creation, or evolution?

[Sheepdot]

Does this experiment do anything to address that question? Do biologists have any ideas on how it happened?

Abiogenesis is a hypothesis that stated that life may be able to be made from non-life. This, of course, goes against the Laws of Biogenesis, and is a fundamental tenet of Atheism. While having never been observed, it is claimed to be falsifiable, scientists just keep trying and believe that one day they'll eventually "get it".

To Be Seen At Nova PBS

[Quirk]

A recent segment of Nova dealt with this and can be watched online.

What bugged me was that at the intro to the episode the narrator, a bad comic if I've ever seen one and an anchor dragging down a once good program, spoke of the work as the greatest work since creation. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was then flashed on the screen showing the 'Creator's' hand outstreached to the reaching hand of his creation, Adam. IMO it stank of lip service to the American fundamentalist neoconservatives.

Are we Gods yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is said that only God can make a tree ... but men can sprout a woodie. Is this new, artificial life like that?

I for one welcome our new artificial overlords ;)

Re:constructed....

[KillShill]

creation, means from nothing. no existing matter, space or time was used in its formation.

construction (assembly, building etc) means that other parts of the universe came together and formed a new entity.

the first is impossible according to science.

the second is a common occurance around the universe.

carl sagan and his apple pie example.