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."

Comments

Re:Get your own dirt!

[Butisol]

Thanks for the stupid pulpit joke.

Re:Intelligent design

[QuantumG]

Awesome sarcasm +1.

Seeing as we're having the inevitable Intelligent Design conversation (I'd much rather be discussing how we can use the awesome power of nanotechnology to change the world, but hey), I guess I should discuss my sig.

Why are all Creationists so uncreative? They don't seem to have any opinions of their own, they just regurgitate whatever they've been told. Are we to believe "it looks like someone made it" is the best argument they can come up with? Or maybe the "random chance couldn't have made life" argument? Any reasonably intelligent person who knows a few things about evolution can come up with some examples of predictions that are made by the theory and yet are just not true, and yet this kind of legitimate scientific objection isn't even entertained by the Creationist and Intelligent Design mob.

Let me give you a few examples:

* Why are chicken eggs so tasty? Animals have been stealing eggs from birds for millions of years, shouldn't they have evolved some non-tasty additives by now?
* Iron is an essential part of metabolism. Brains and nervous systems are basically electrical systems. Some animals even have a compass. So why do no animals have radios? Not even primitive ones.
* Impressive results have been seen in modeling evolution - for example, genetic algorithms - but all of these systems plateau after a certain amount of runtime. This is the so called "local maxima" problem. Yet biologists claim with a straight face that Darwinian evolution is open ended.
* Horizontal gene transfer has been observed in the lab between multi-cellular organisms.. doesn't this just completely blow away the traditionalist "tree of life" assumption?

and I could go on, and on and on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Creationist.. but if I can think this stuff up, how come all I ever hear from the Intelligent Design people is the same tired old bunk?

Put some effort in crackpots, you're boring me.

Re:Self Replicating?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Absolutely. He distills them to their pure essence. Very Platonic. Perfect form, unhindered by the distortive forces of mass. His writing complements it as well. I really think this world would be a better place, if we were all stick figures.

Also, throughout high school I was marked down on my various school projects requiring artistic ability because I only used stick figures.

Also, I think he's got some serious sexual issues. Lately, he's been crossing the invisible line between the way the world is, and the way it should not be and is not.