Slashdot Mirror
Biologist (Almost) Creates Artificial Life
Aditya Malik writes "Wired has an interesting story up about how a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building 'protocells' from artificial molecules which are very close to satisfying the conditions for being 'alive.' 'Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.' This obviously raises some questions about creationism, not to mention some scary bio-research-gone-wild scenarios."
All organisms self replicate. Just because something is lab-made doesn't mean it would magically not be subject to evolutionary forces.
Having not been made by natural evolutionary forces, it's unlikely they would be fit to survive in any natural environment. These things have not been instilled with any defenses against things looking to eat them including bacteria. Didn't read the article, but I would guess they aren't capable of digesting molecules, they probably have to be presented with ready to go "nutrients" to replicate, move or do anything. You don't find that anywhere in the real world, in fact, as I recall you don't even find that in your bloodstream. ATP is what your molecules use for power, but you only get that once your cells import glucose and your mitochondria turn it into ATP.
In other words, they have absolutely no way to eat anything they would need to survive.
In evolutionary biology, a major cause of extinction, at least in theory, is called "changing rules." If you're an organism doing well, you're highly adapted to your environment and proliferate. Think of the dinosaurs, they ruled the earth, bigger was better. Mammals were barely hanging on for dear life, small, furry, warm blooded, nocturnal didn't make sense at the time. If the rules suddenly change though through environmental shift, you might not be fit for the new environment. The asteroid hits, an ice age happens, and suddenly cold-blooded huge lizards can't cut it and massively go extinct. The only reason reptiles remain today is that there was significant variation in that clade that allowed some of them to survive in the new game.
These artificial bugs are barely managing to survive in an environment tailored to them, they can't replicate on their own. They also appear to have no variation. If they get out of their environment, they have no chance of survival. It's precisely because they're subject to evolutionary forces that they have no chance.
There is strong evidence that dinosaurs were in fact warm blooded and were not reptiles. Many actually lived in colder climates in the northern regions of the globe.
The information wants to be free, I just give it somewhere to go.
Recall that bacteria have had around 4 billion years to turn Earth into a nanopocalyptic wasteland.
You mean like the Oxygen Catastrophe, where uncontrollably replicating microbiomachines saturated the atmosphere with a waste product so caustic that it rotted the very rocks out from under them?
The 'problem', if one may state it as such, is in your presentation of the options...
A. the universe always existed
B. it was created by something/someone.
That's really three options...
A. the universe always existed
B. it popped into existence due to something, we don't know what - we may never find out
C. it was created by someone, and we call that someone God.
B and C are distinctly different; just because I have no explanation of what caused the Big Bang, doesn't mean 'God did it'. Even if scientists told me right now that it's impossible to find out what caused the Big Bang (which is very likely), it doesn't mean 'God did it'. 'God did it' isn't an answer to a question - it is a belief. I have no problems with beliefs (Hello, I'm an agnostic), but too often the 'God did it'-approach is used as a substitute for actual answers.
Back on-topic... you don't ultimately need one or the other having to always have existed. Keep in mind that the prevailing idea is that 'before the universe existed' is a problematic sentence as there is no 'before the universe existed'.. time, if you will, did not exist until the universe began.