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:Self Replicating?

[QuantumG]

Why? You don't imagine that something as fragile and immature as this could actually compete outside the lab do you?

Hell, take an existing microbe and remove the genes that regulate its pH level and it will kill itself in a few generations.

It wasn't you who sent the death threats to the LHC physicists was it?

Questions about Creationism?

[thefolkmetal]

That seems slightly ironic in this particular case, simply because these protocells were "created" by this Jack fellow. I don't believe in Jack.

Re:Questions about Creationism?

[the_humeister]

But Jack believes in you. We should all be grateful for his holiness, Jack. I pray to Jack every night and sometimes wonder if He hears my prayers? Well, Jack works in mysterious ways...

Re:Questions about Creationism?

[nawcom]

Hey! at least Jack has a damn answering machine. Way better than the 20 something other gods and goddesses out there who won't even effectively manage all of the prayers... I'd rather burn for eternity rather than serving some person who is out of date by a good amount of decades when it comes to telecommunications.

Re:Questions about Creationism?

[glittalogik]

Did you mean my uncle Jack? Because I once helped my uncle Jack off a horse.

Let me guess...

[not already in use]

He tried to create a phallic looking creature.

What questions exactly?

[Itninja]

This obviously raises some questions about creationism..

Since the scientist did the (almost) creating here, what questions would this raise? Now if the (almost) alive protocells had popped into existence by random chance and from a void of nothingness, that would raise some uncomfortable questions.

Re:What questions exactly?

[Chris Burke]

Since the scientist did the (almost) creating here, what questions would this raise? Now if the (almost) alive protocells had popped into existence by random chance and from a void of nothingness, that would raise some uncomfortable questions.

Because it would show that life can be created from basic non-living components using simple chemical reactions, and that it didn't require some magical "zap" from heaven to do it? Yes, in this case it would be a scientist doing it intentionally, rather than it occurring by chance in the primordial soup, but it shows that in principle it is possible. At that point you would have a pretty solid theory of abiogenesis if you can show that earth had in the distant past these basic components and sufficient energy to cause the necessary reactions, and then just like with evolution you have millions of years and trillions of molecules to handle the "chance" part.

Re:What questions exactly?

[lawpoop]

I'll tell you what questions this "raises" -- but prepare to be dissapointed. I had a high-school science teacher, who was a great teacher, but was a creationist. Yes, he really was a great science teacher. He spent half a class one day explaining "questions"* about cosmology and creationism. He didn't proselytize, didn't say that he had the answers, or that the Bible did. He just asked some questions that got the students thinking. IMHO, I think that's good -- though questions early on are like inoculations of skepticism. And, there are good, scientific answers that sufficiently motivated students looked up ( this was before widespread internet)

Anywho, one of the questions was something like "Suppose a scientist creates life from scratch in a test tube. Is that evidence of abiogenesis, or creationism?" One answer, that most scientifically minded people choose, is that the scientist isn't doing anything that couldn't have happened in nature without the scientist, so therefore it's evidence of abiogenesis. Other people, those more creation minded, say that an intelligent being, in this case a scientist, created life from raw materials, so therefore, its evidence that life is created by intelligence.

Please, don't shoot, I'm just the messenger. You're asking what questions would be raised, I'm telling you the questions that people get out of this.

* He also posed another question about radiometric dating of rocks that I never got a satisfactory answer for. For instance, say they date some rocks, and there is 0.03% lead to uranium, or some such ratio, and therefor the rock is X million years old. How do we know that when the rock was originally formed, it was 100% uranium in the sample that we are now taking from the rock? If a rock cools from molten lava, aren't active and decayed isotopes mixed together, thus throwing off the dating scales based on that ratio?

Re:What questions exactly?

[jfengel]

The trick with uranium dating is that when zircon crystals form, uranium is trapped but lead is excluded. So you know that all of the lead was created AFTER the crystal formed.

This is cross-checked against other forms of dating, too.

The disappointing thing is that your science teacher was spreading doubt on the subject when the answers were out there to be found. When a vast number of scientists say it's true, "I don't think it's right" is not a valid answer unless you've got a PhD. He may not have been spreading religion, but he was spreading doubt about a well-founded science, as if the scientists themselves were ignorant of it. They are not, and it's extremely bad form to imply that they are.

Re:What questions exactly?

[Eil]

Because it would show that life can be created from basic non-living components using simple chemical reactions, and that it didn't require some magical "zap" from heaven to do it?

I don't foresee this causing any problems because (to my knowledge) the bible says "God created life," not "Only God can create life."

Of course, I've been wrong before.

Re:What questions exactly?

[lawpoop]

Thanks for the answer. I'd always wondered about that one.

The disappointing thing is that your science teacher was spreading doubt on the subject when the answers were out there to be found. When a vast number of scientists say it's true, "I don't think it's right" is not a valid answer unless you've got a PhD. He may not have been spreading religion, but he was spreading doubt about a well-founded science, as if the scientists themselves were ignorant of it. They are not, and it's extremely bad form to imply that they are.

I'm a scientifically-minded skeptic, but I gotta say I disagree with you 100% here. I think that the essence of science is doubt, skepticism, and inquiry. These theories are not so fragile that we have to protect them with a shield of awe. If the science is well-founded, then it should be able to clear these hurdles easily. It should be able to withstand the most withering lines of inquiry -- And it does.

If you teach kids to blindly accept what "the authorities" tell you, whether those authorities are the Bible, or well-respected grey-bearded scientists, then you will get adults who accept whatever the authorities tell them -- in other words, people who can't be scientists, because they don't know how to think for themselves, and therefore can't use the scientific method.

When we teach science, we shouldn't say "Believe this because a bunch of scientists believe in it!". Instead, we should teach them to ask questions, develop a hypothesis, and think about ways to prove or disprove it. When they're old enough, they should be doing experiements. Think, ask questions, make observations, and do experiments to test your theories. That is science, not the consensus of elites.

Re:What questions exactly?

[jfengel]

Skepticism is good and necessary, but it must be followed up by research. Saying that you don't know the answer is valid. Implying that scientists don't know, when they DO know and you don't, is not.

You can encourage the kids to go double-check the answers, and then expand on them. I'm just concerned that his statement was taken as "Those scientists make a lot of statements that they can't back up," and that's wrong.

Re:What questions exactly?

[quantaman]

Thanks for the answer. I'd always wondered about that one.

The disappointing thing is that your science teacher was spreading doubt on the subject when the answers were out there to be found. When a vast number of scientists say it's true, "I don't think it's right" is not a valid answer unless you've got a PhD. He may not have been spreading religion, but he was spreading doubt about a well-founded science, as if the scientists themselves were ignorant of it. They are not, and it's extremely bad form to imply that they are.

I'm a scientifically-minded skeptic, but I gotta say I disagree with you 100% here. I think that the essence of science is doubt, skepticism, and inquiry. These theories are not so fragile that we have to protect them with a shield of awe. If the science is well-founded, then it should be able to clear these hurdles easily. It should be able to withstand the most withering lines of inquiry -- And it does.

If you teach kids to blindly accept what "the authorities" tell you, whether those authorities are the Bible, or well-respected grey-bearded scientists, then you will get adults who accept whatever the authorities tell them -- in other words, people who can't be scientists, because they don't know how to think for themselves, and therefore can't use the scientific method.

The theory could withstand those lines of inquiry if those students were given the theory. Instead they're given a tiny, perhaps broken, subset of the theory. Then they're told a larger, more elaborate crackpot theory and given "evidence" to support that theory.

Perhaps they learn a tiny bit of critical thinking in discarding the "conventional" theory, but at the cost of incorrect knowledge. Even worse people have a very strong tendency to defend the first opinion we learn on a subject, chances are a lot of them are going to learn a good deal more about rationalizing their incorrect beliefs than skeptically discarding them and arriving at the correct ones.

When we teach science, we shouldn't say "Believe this because a bunch of scientists believe in it!". Instead, we should teach them to ask questions, develop a hypothesis, and think about ways to prove or disprove it. When they're old enough, they should be doing experiements. Think, ask questions, make observations, and do experiments to test your theories. That is science, not the consensus of elites.

True though at the end of the day it's also a good thing to realize that science is about evidence, and if a bunch of scientists believe a theory to be true I think that's pretty damn good evidence that it is true.

Do you hear that, sonny?

[jcwayne]

That's the sound of 100,000 /.ers trying to come up with the perfect obscure movie reference. We'd better get out of here before it gets ugly.

Too late...

Re:Self Replicating?

[Anonymous Coward]

All organisms self replicate. Just because something is lab-made doesn't mean it would magically not be subject to evolutionary forces.

I.E if these little fellas were to multiply explosively, there would be a resulting population explosions of protocell eating amoebas, and an amoeba eating shrimp, and a shrimp eating whale, and finally Norwegians.

Get your own dirt!

[umrguy76]

This reminds me of a joke:

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!"

Re:Get your own dirt!

[arevos]

God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"

I find jokes like this interesting, because they demonstrate quite neatly humanity's obsession with modesty. Humans have relatively little power to alter their surroundings. We have hands and fingers that can manipulate small objects, but nothing much beyond that. We're a creature who's first resume could be summed up with "Skills: Can throw rocks" and "Hobbies: Enthusiastic hooting". We live short lives and die horribly easily. Compared to the vast energies of quasars, or the intricacies of quantum particles, we are powerless and clumsy creatures; small sacks of meat with little more natural skills than the ability to pick up small stones.

But in a blink of the cosmic eye, our species has constructed, well, this. Technology of unfathomable intricacy, abilities far beyond the dreams of our forebears. When you consider what we started out with, and where we are now, and how much work goes into everything we take for granted, it's too much for a single mind to comprehend. But rather than reflect on our amazing achievements, we exhibit an enviable modesty, making jokes comparing these achievements to a hypothetical perfect being. We ever hold in our minds how far we have to go, almost never considering how far we have come.

It's akin to leaving a child on a beach, and coming back an hour later to find he's accepting a Nobel Prize for the particle accelerator he build out of sand and seaweed. You might be amazed, but the child would merely shrug depreciatingly, and say something like "Well, it's not as good as the one at CERN."

Conversely, our concept of God is a entity that is inherently incapable of performing impressive actions. He might make impressive things, or be impressive to behold, but because his power is, by definition, unlimited, there can be no effort, or possibility of failure involved in his manipulations of the Universe. God creating a human being is no more impressive than a human picking a pebble off a beach; both are inherent skills that require no effort or risk of failure. But for a human being to create life, for a being of our meager abilities to succeed in reproducing, even in part, the awesome forces of nature and the cosmos... now that's impressive.

In summary, that joke makes God look like the asshole parents who try and win races against their 5 year old children. It's not a flattering image.

Umm. What?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why does this raise any questions about creationism? To the best of my knowledge, there are essentially no creationists who argue that life was created by humans or any other intelligent organisms(unless they are squirming around on the stand, trying to avoid the establishment clause). And nothing in any current evolutionary hypothesis precludes artificially constructed organisms any more than they preclude artificially constructed computers and hammers. The fact that we can, almost, produce simple organism analogs doesn't mean anything one way or the other, though I suspect that it will be a very convenient mechanism for exploring the capabilities of (relatively) low complexity structures, and will provide the opportunity to do evolutionary experiments from well defined baselines.

As for the bioresearch gone wild scenarios: all advances in knowledge create the potential for trouble; but I suspect that it will be quite some time before any synthetic organism becomes much of a threat. The world outside is an incredible hostile place, crawling with microbes that have been slitting each others' throats in innumerable horrid ways for millennia. The interaction will be something like this:

[Synthetic wimp organism]:"Hi, I'm synthetic."
[Hardbitten wild bacterium]:"I fucking killed my own family over a nanogram of glucose."
[SWO]:*gulp*
[HWB]:"Hey, look, one of the thousands of antibiotic compounds secreted by fungi as part of the brutal chemical war of all against all."
[SWO]:*Dies horribly*

To all worried about "grey goo"...

[rdwald]

Recall that bacteria have had around 4 billion years to turn Earth into a nanopocalyptic wasteland. Sure, they're everywhere, but they aren't dismantling everything else for parts. If this were a real risk, it would already have happened.

Re:To all worried about "grey goo"...

[jeffb (2.718)]

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?

Re:Self Replicating?

[philspear]

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.

Re:Self Replicating?

[QuantumG]

Oh dear. It's a fat lipid with some RNA in it, not a magic eight ball. It's trivial to see exactly what would happen if this stuff was released into the environment: extinction, and likely in seconds. To work on this stuff they have to build huge clean rooms for precisely this reason.

My grasp of physics is much better than my limited knowledge of biology.

And yet you feel the need to open your mouth and proclaim doom.

Re:Self Replicating?

[SuperSlug]

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.

Re:Interesting work

[draco664]

Male and female humans can rarely interact successfully (or at least satisfactorily).

Oh boy, are you doing it wrong!

Re:grey goo?

[Anonymous Coward]

We are they gray goo.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=40.743095,-74.045105&spn=0.869827,1.235962&t=k&z=10

Biologist (Almost) Creates Artificial Life

[pitchpipe]

Speaking of self replicating, I had sex last night with a supermodel (almost). Well, I guess that depends on what is meant by almost. Also, the definition of supermodel might be relevant here 8^)

Re:Interesting work

[im_thatoneguy]

It's only the biologists if they didn't reproduce it using means that feasibly would occur under historical circumstances.

If I pick up a rock, let go and it falls then I've found substantial evidence of the feasibility of spontaneous falling when an object is unsupported.

This instance of life isn't interesting to ambiogenesis but to rule out artificial life as tangential to creationism is an innaccurate blanket statement.

Re:Self Replicating?

[SuperSlug]

Ok here is some more evidence

Bone structure and histology
Growth rates
Predator/prey ratios
Speed and agility
Rate of evolution
Similarities with birds
Parental Care
Bone Isotope Composition
Insulation
Arctic Faunas

Should I go on? There is a ton of evidence for each of these items that indicate that dinosaurs were warm blooded. There speed, growth rates and similarities with birds to the most obvious one.

Re:Self Replicating?

[zunicron]

Strong evidence? Jurassic Park doesn't count as evidence.

Re:Interesting work

[Animaether]

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.

There is nothing "unnatural" about science

[Molochi]

"Having not been made by natural evolutionary forces..."

A dude in a lab is just as much a force of evolution and nature as a comet fueling a primorial soup or whatever you think triggered life on Earth. You don't GET to go outside the system. There is no unnatural .

When the researcher adds the next improvement to these globs of goo that allows them to survive better they will have evolved inside the system of nature which includes the petri dish they may someday live in.

And if it comes to pass that one day they evolve into a symbiotic arm for amputees or a blob that eats chicago, that will be natural as well.

Re:There is nothing "unnatural" about science

[Urkki]

You don't GET to go outside the system. There is no unnatural .

One completely valid definition of "natural" is "not made/influenced by humans". That is in fact the most common meaning of the word "natural". Or to put it another way, if it is "made", it is not "natural". If it is "natural", it was "formed" or "evolved".

Then of course "unnatural" has additional meaning, something like "extraordinary in a bad or sinister way". Like "unnatural weather".

I'm sorry (well, not really), but you have no authority to decide what words mean...

Re:Self Replicating?

[Everyone Is Seth]

Well, there goes about 99% of all the scientific "research" I have done in my life...

Re:Self Replicating?

[QuantumG]

No. Microbes have to control their pH levels otherwise their own operation will denature their proteins, literally tearing them apart. This is micro-biology 101.

Re:Interesting work

[Rick Bentley]

I don't think so. If a creationist asks a scientist "Where did we come from" the scientist will go into evolution, the history of the earth, the history of our solar system, how stars are formed and how their death creates the heavier elements and how we think it all came from a big bang. When asked "where did the big bang come from?" the scientist should reply "we're working on it, here's what we know and think so far..."

This is very different from someone asking a creationist "where did we come from?" and he says "adam, eve, 7 days and nights, all from god." When asked where god came from he says "er, always been here, I guess"

god is often just used as a big logical dumping ground for everything that can't be explained. This is unfortunate, because it keeps (some of) us from working on the hard problems.

Re:Interesting work

[Weedlekin]

"ALL other religions and world views always place their version of God within our time-space-matter-energy universe, or as as part of it."

Balderdash. Hinduism for example says that this universe is one of many that have existed, and others will exist after it (their total number is supposedly greater than the drops of water in the Ganges). Each of them is created by Brahma The Creator, maintained by Vishnu the Preserver, and will eventually be destroyed by Shiva the Destroyer, who are mere avatars of The Great One, a being so complex that humans can only perceive minute and sometimes apparently self-contradictory aspects of it. The story says that one day to Brahma is greater than four thousand million human years, and when he sleeps at night, the Earth is destroyed, and will be recreated when he awakes. After Brahma has lived a number of these days equal to the days in a human life, Shiva will destroy this universe (an act that also destroys Shiva and Vishnu), leaving Brahma to create a new universe and new avatars of Vishnu and Shiva.

"ONLY in the Bible does the real, eternal self-existent God reveal Himself as One outside of and entirely independent of the Universe and its content."

Nobody who isn't living in complete ignorance of the writings of the many other religions that have existed during our history would make such a preposterous claim, because the African Kabuka and Mandinga religions have single gods who create the entirety of the universe, as does the original Korean religion (which calls the creator JuMulJu), the ancient Egyptian cosmogony of Ptah, and many, many other religions both ancient and modern.

Re:Self Replicating?

[Archimonde]

Actually the evidence for warm blooded dinosaurs is slim at best.

According to this paper there might be a possibility for some number of warm blooded dinosaurs, but it is a more of a stretch to say that all (or even majority) of them were warm blooded. You should read that paper because it answers much of your points (with arguments/data).

I have pretty much no knowledge about dinosaurs but you can use a bit of common sense here. Size has its limits. It doesn't matter if the animal is cold or warm blooded, the bigger the animal, the relatively slower it is. So just to clarify, t-rex probably was relatively slow. If it were fast, its leg muscles should be bigger than whole its body, which is impossible. And you can always use elephants for the example. Elephants can't run. They can walk a bit faster. But to say they are fast is a exaggeration.

   

Created life vs evolved life?

[Colin Smith]

Evolved life wins.

We have had billions of years of self replicating machine eating each other for survival. What on earth do you think that they'll do to an organism which doesn't have that background?
 

Re:Created life vs evolved life?

[speculatrix]

vote it into office?

Re:Such a snotty subject line.

[somersault]

Since when were high school students 'free thinking'? At least the ones reading wikipedia are actively searching out information rather than only learning it because they have to. Yeah, I just watched Good Will Hunting for the first time last week ;) While the story is pretty exaggerated it has some truth. I didn't learn anything at university that I didn't already know, or couldn't have just learned by reading a textbook. Seriously. I was in fact much more interested in learning before I went to university, but part of that was just personal circumstances. I spent a lot of time during high school doing coding in my spare time, but since I had to start doing it for coursework/my job I just want to relax in my spare time..

If by a wikipedia whore you mean someone who will only have a cursory glance at the subject and not look into it in any further detail, then I agree though.

For something as nebulous as the definition of 'life' though, you could start in worse places than wikipedia for seeing a few different opinions. I'm seeing a lot of yahoo question and answer sessions whenever I google for info these days, and some of the answers are atrociously wrong, though presented in such a way as to try and sound like the person knows what they're talking about.

Re:Interesting work

[Joey Vegetables]

From my very limited background as an amateur, part-time Bible student in the past:

• The oldest texts (Alexandrian family mainly) differ substantially from the later "Textus Receptus" family. These differences dwarf any subtle differences between translations based on the same textual family.
• Most widely used English translations are actually pretty good. In particular, the KJV does a fairly good job of translating the TR (though the English is of course out of date) and the NIV does a decent job on the Alexandrian family.
• People who prefer the KJV in spite of its dated English, including myself, often do so because they are not fully persuaded that a handful of older texts outweigh the evidence of numerous newer ones. But even in this group there are many (again including me) who would like an updated version of the KJV, keeping the same textual basis but updating the language to be more understandable to 21st century English speakers.
• Even the substantial differences between Alexandrian and non-Alexandrian manuscript families are somewhat irrelevant to doctrine.
• For the Old Testament we have a completely different problem. The text can be reconstructed fairly well. The meaning of the text sometimes cannot, because of our less than perfect knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic. The best evidence often comes from versions (translations) and while some of these are much later than the texts in question, they do provide valuable insight into the meaning.
• The Greek LXX (Septuagint) version is enigmatic at best . . . it is not of particularly good quality, yet Jesus and the apostles quoted from it extensively, even in places where it appears to differ in meaning from the Hebrew text. To me this is an unsolved problem. It suggests a need for further research and questioning of many of the assumptions Bible scholars tend to make.