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Researchers One Step Closer To Creating Life
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute are potentially one step closer to creating life. In an experiment they recently created enzymes that can replicate and evolve. 'It kind of blew me away,' said team member Tracey Lincoln of the Scripps Research Institute, who is working on her Ph.D. 'What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting.'"
What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting
I bet robots would fascinate these people.
Movie quote:
Male Character: "God creates dinosaurs. God kills dinosaurs. Man kills God. Man creates dinosaurs."
Female Character: "Dinosaurs eat man... woman inherits the earth."
Hah!
I'll finally be one step closer to creating my race of manbearpigs.
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Apparently there are no fertile researchers at the Scripps Research Institute?
I have this feeling that in 100 years "mechanical" robots will be very passe.
meh
Researcher quoted as saying: "I was so close... I took her out to eat, paid for the movie, laid on the charm as heavy as I could, but it wasn't enough. However, I do feel that I'm one step closer to creating life."
the enzymes are being intelligently designed . . .
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
Over half the world population has been able to create life for some time. Aren't you all a little late to the party? -_-
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It's a bit nicer than the print article: Here
They are very clear in saying that what they have created is "NOT ALIVE."
This is very interesting work.
import system.cool.Sig;
but not as we know it.
..consciousness precedes matter. Just throwing matter together won't magically instill consciousness.
A scientist enters a research laboratory.
Dr. Praline: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
(The Intern does not respond.)
Dr. Praline: 'Ello, Miss?
Intern: What do you mean "miss"?
Dr. Praline: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
Intern: We're closin' for lunch.
Dr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this enzyme what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very facility.
Intern: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue... What's,uh... What's wrong with it?
Dr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
Intern: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
Dr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead enzyme when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Intern: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable compounds, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful refraction!
Dr. Praline: The compounds don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
Intern: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!
Dr. Praline: All right then, if he's restin', I'll wake him up! (shouting at the cage) 'Ello, Mister Polly enzyme! I've got a lovely fresh cuttle fish for you if you show...
(Intern hits the cage)
Intern: There, he moved!
Dr. Praline: No, he didn't, that was you hitting the cage!
Intern: I never!!
Dr. Praline: Yes, you did!
Intern: I never, never did anything...
Dr. Praline: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) 'ELLO POLLY!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!
(Takes enzyme out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)
Dr. Praline: Now that's what I call a dead enzyme.
Intern: No, no.....No, 'e's stunned!
Dr. Praline: STUNNED?!?
Intern: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin' up! Norwegian Blues stun easily, major.
Dr. Praline: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely 'ad enough of this. That enzyme is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged study.
Intern: Well, he's...he's, ah...probably pining for the fjords.
Dr. Praline: PININ' for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got 'im home?
Intern: The Norwegian Blue prefers keepin' on it's back! Remarkable creature, id'nit, squire? Lovely compounds!
Dr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that enzyme when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its slide in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.
(pause)
Intern: Well, o'course it was nailed there!
This story has been up 8 minutes and I only see 5 posts of the same obvious joke, out of 13 posts. Come on /. get you asses in gear.
You mean some scientist out there almost got laid!? This IS one for the headlines! I just hope we'll be able to replicate the results with ease. God knows how many infeasible experiments big organizations have dangled in front of my low budget lab.
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"What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting"--Sounds like my last sex partner!
The primary reason this sort of research is interesting is because it might give insight as to how abiogenesis occured. Most of the current hypotheses revolve around small sets of molecules becoming self-replicating and eventually forming cells with DNA and protein and all that good stuff. Moreover, even if this were similar to robots doing it on a small scale is independently interesting.
This doesn't end up like that scene in Alien Resurrection where Ripley finds all her failed clones.
the enzymes are being intelligently designed . . .
That's correct. Now the next step, once we are sure that these things are capable of evolving into life, is to invent a time machine and send them back in time to become the seeds for life on this planet. As documented here.
The enemies of Democracy are
Slashdot, you are letting me down!
I wonder what she'd think about this evolution.
The ultimate proof of not needing a deity or special substance for life (or mind too) would be able to construct it out of raw ingredients. I 99% believe this possible.
That the hippies experimented with creating life in the 70's, man. I'm not quite sure how it worked, there were a lot of drugs involved... Something about a doo hicky and the cha cha?
I would assume they're referring to the automatic self-replication and mutation of the RNA.
"Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it."
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
Easy? You must be new here.
And I was musing that her dream of man creating life is still unfulfilled two centuries later. Stories about magician animating the non-living are as old as man, but hers became iconic.
If you haven't already heard of Andrew Crosse and his experiments this is well worth a look. http://www.spartechsoftware.com/dimensions/mystical/AndrewCroise.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Crosse The biochemical experiments conducted in 1837 produced insects which were later named acari or Acarus Crossii
What are "some life-like properties"? As soon as she is able to define them explicitly and unambiguously, then I am prepared to start considering her claims.
I didn't RTFA but, based on the Slashdot summary, I'd imagine that the major "life-like" properties she's referring to are replication and evolution.
As an aside, there isn't actually a precise definition of what it means to be alive. I deal with this myself by considering "alive"-ness to be a multidimensional continuum rather than a binary distinction: something can be more alive in one way and less alive in another way.
For people who feel the need for a binary distinction, though, the debate continues as to where to draw the line and how much relative weight to give the various attributes that are associated with "alive"-ness.
Are you human?
Do you think you are human?
Are you a robot that thinks it is human?
Did they hypnotize you?
Did they lobotomize you?
Do you still think you are a human?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
...is your God now!??!?!?!
Researcher's hands? Test tubes?
"What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting."
Sounds like my ex-wife.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
"Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it."
I once killed my glasses.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The really sad part about this story is somehow, somewhere, someone is going to throw a billion dollars at this research if they promise to focus on the penis first.
At least that's what my spam horoscope told me....
Last week's news was how the Milky Way is bigger and approaching Andromeda faster than thought before.
This week's news is how the Andromeda Strain is much closer than we thought before.
The Tom Cruise connection to the UFO nuts and the bible belt.
Quack, quack.
You may shout I'm anti-science and so be it then (even though I'm working on my PhD in physics). I still think this is scary.
Nothing evolves like evolution!
TFA is just more 'create life' hype to get research funding dollars.
From the article: "Specifically, the researchers synthesized RNA
enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins
or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.
"Immortalized" RNA, they call it, at least within the limited
conditions of a laboratory. More significantly, the scientists
then mixed different RNA enzymes that had replicated, along with some
of the raw material they were working with, and let them compete in
what's sure to be the next big hit: "Survivor: Test Tube."
Not even sure from TFA what the "breakthrough" is supposed to
be...'self-replicating RNA' or 'immortalized RNA?' UC Santa
Cruz researchers worked
out the structure of such a molecule two years ago.
This would be slightly more impressive if the researchers could claim
that their immortal RNA was capable of de novo synthesis
but the only claim they make is that no 'proteins' or 'cellular
components' are required for replication from their "raw material"
which is apparently some type of RNA.
I see your Obligatory with my Obligatory xkcd reference:
http://xkcd.com/387/
Not entirely. According to the paper, they were in part designed by in vitro evolution, an "unintelligent" design method that makes use of random mutation and selection to derive better enzymes. The power of "unintelligent" design mechanisms (of which evolution is one) is that they do not require that the specific solution to a design problem be known in advance.
"skunkopotamus"
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Eugenics and Oncology ride in the same wagon for long stretches of the way
and this has been pioneered by the eugenics field first by 'tainting' tetanus
vaccine with progesterone and thus sensibilizing the immune system to
react to releases of progesterone (a hormone absolutely needed for achieving and
maintaing pregnancy).
I can only imagine that this will be used to target all kinds of key cells in
the human body.
Come on, the best chance of us coming up with artificial life is self-replicating robots. Artificial plants, essentially. Don't know why we'd want those around unless we plan to harvest them or their husks for some use like we do with wheat and hemp and so forth, but it'd surely be staggeringly interesting.
And we could get there without magical molecular biology tricks: just engineer the parts required of an universal constructor, then re-engineer those so that they can be built by one. Boosh! Well-defined and devoid of "and then it's alliiiiiivvvve!!!!" type sturm und drang.
Dude I'm sure I'll take a Karma hit but I'm willing to do so. That shit had me laughing out loud. All y'all need to lighten the fuck up. That was straight up funny. Hate to see a good joke modded down like that.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Some science major gets a passing grade in this classand figures he's going to get lucky with an actual woman.
They need to teach the difference between theoretical science and practical engineering.
Have gnu, will travel.
They should combine this research conference with "The Singularity" conference and The Darwin Awards. It's all heading the same direction.
Table-ized A.I.
What if I'm really just an amoeba dreaming about being a human and I'm going to wake up and find that I'm living in a puddle of water and about to be shat on by a passing armadillo?!
OMG SOMEBODY HELP ME I MUST NOT WAKE UP!!@!
I hate printers.
TFA article states: "DNA is the software of life..." which
is total crap. If they insist on using a computer analogy, they
could say 'DNA is the information storage of life' and the 'gene
expression mechanism is the software.' Recent advances in epigenetics
have shown that gene expression is much more complex than previously
thought. To use the computer analogy, there's 'memory' chips and there's 'logic' chips
and they are not the same thing.
1. Get woman
2. Sleep with woman
3. ????
4. Create life
Well if it is life and it isn't life then it's somewhere inbetween. Lets call it half-life.
Hey! this game was already invented - prior art!
They do need us.
I for one welcome our new ribozyme overlords.
Check this out. You can read the whole book online for free. www.creationscience.com Even if the hydroplate theory isn't correct, it's very interesting. Beyond that, there's so much in the book that's really hard to dismiss easily. If you're intellectually honest, this is worth your while. Enjoy!
I am a science graduate and I appreciate science in many forms but when it comes to genetic issues or giving artificial life I think its better to leave things as they are. Bcoz change in this major process will not help us in anyway but will create more panic.
and defecates into the machine
Nope, this does not serve as a proof that a deity is unnecessary, since the research is based on observations of life. In other words, even if this is successful, already existing life was a prerequisite.
Regardless, unless there's an angle I'm missing here, man creating true life from scratch... real, living creatures from nothing... wouldn't that disprove the existence of God according to scriptures? Because according to the ones I read, only the God of the Bible can create life. If some scientist actually managed to create real life, then it seems to me that would prove that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob doesn't exist.
Which is why I don't believe it'll ever happen. Any other Biblical scholars/philosophers, if you see a hole in this argument, by all means, throw it out there.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
When will they grow something we can have sex with?
Xaotik Designs
Ha...this shows how much more fake religion is...now this will finally make people wake up...YES!
life "ab initio". Even if a group managed to reproduce an entire human being "ab initio" from a protein replicator and an genetic map, this still does not count. We are not even close to understand why DNA/RNA/proteins act they way they do. This can be liken to someone dumping all the chips/resistors/capactiors for a modern PC with a schematic on how to connect it together to form a living PC (hint: the used to be called Heath Kits). Does that individual who assemble the CPU/GPU/memroy/rom capacitors, etc to form a working PC really understand how the central CPU is designed? F**k no. Or how a modern GPU works or is assembled or the material properties why it works? F**K no. I'll bet most Heath Kitt enthusiast couldn't even described dI/dt for a simple inductors, capacitor and resistor to a AC line. Please.
Until science figures out what 'ACTUALLY" Life is, they cannot achieve or understand the real science of what "LIFE" is.
With all the advancements, we may produce flesh, organs or merely replicate the organs but, with out a clue of what LIFE is, we will never ever achieve that feat.
Fascination with out rational thought is stupidity! Enjoy the dream.
We're not a single step closer to creating life. Self-replicating RNA was already created in the lab somewhere in 2001 or possibly even earlier than that:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/292/5520/1319
The only new thing about this research, is that they've proven that self-replicating RNA actually evolves, which is a major step as well, but it doesn't bring us any closer to creating life. Also note that the biggest question of all, is how those RNA molecules would be formed from the primordial soup; so far we've only been able to manufacture them in the lab.
0x or or snor perron?!
In my opinion, self-replication and mutation is a sufficient defintion of life. Surely all living organisms on earth consist of microscopic self-replicating machines, even if they sometimes work together to construct bigger machines?
If this isn't something that says get prepared now I don't know what is.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
You know the part where they put some black gunk in a canister, and then someone comes to the fridge and opens it up thinking its some sort of soup, and the stuff latches unto his face, and then you see Venom swinging from the roof tops.......wait, I might have to dust off my spiderman outfit.
What liberties did this play take with her original story? I don't recall the idea of man-made life being a "dream" of hers at all...quite the opposite.
Our typical definition of life is arbitrary.
Just take a look at viruses. They're generally so simple as to be basically a glitch in other "living" things, yet some don't classify them as life, some do. And for some reason we draw a distinction that something has to be "alive" for a certain period of time, or for a certain number of generations.
To me, attempting to classify something as alive or not is a pretty pointless endeavor, and it's not all that interesting to say that one thing is alive while another isn't.
By certain definitions, religions or ideologies are just as alive as a virus. All of the religions that survive contain imperatives that each generation of believers pass the belief to their descendants, or to others, , preferably both including those imperatives. The cycle then repeats itself ad infinitum. Just as a virus passes its DNA from one host to the next. The ideology has books or writings, the virus has DNA. From an abstract perspective, it's hard to tell the difference. Judaism has such strong imperatives to raise your children as Jewish that they're practically a race. Christianity has such strong imperatives to proselytize, that some Christians devote their entire lives to mission work. It's these things that make religions powerful. Try and think of a religion or ideology that doesn't contain imperatives to replicate. It's rather difficult, because without them, they simply go extinct.
It's kind of like the fascinating perspective induced when someone says, "A chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg.". When you look at it like that, the definition of life blurs a bit.
Classifying only things that move around and procreate is a pretty restrictive definition that is potentially holding back our reasoning.
The only thing that they all have in common is persistent replication without outside guidance. Put like that, life isn't a very interesting phenomenon.
Question everything
Dude, you need to get out and meet more women.
People have been creating life without knowing what they are doing for a very long time. It's done all the time.
One doesn't need to understand the mechanism in order to create life.
Strictly speaking they are not creating anything, but contructing it. Creation means "bringing into existence" from nothing; not something withing the boundaries of science, where preservation of energy, mass and what have you are the reality. Constructing a living entity, or one that is nearly living is still an impressive feat and an important step closer to discovering what life is.
Because that is one other thing we don't actually know; we know a lot of living organisms, and a lot of dead things, and they seem to be fundamentally different in some way, but we don't quite know where the boundary goes.
There are lots of things you can believe in without evidence, such unicorns and fairies, why is a belief in fairies any more or less rational than a belief in "a higher power"?
There is evidence that unicorns exist; they're oryxes that have lost a horn.
...will the life we create in the laboratory believe in us?
"No good deed goes unpunished"
That is the God described in the Bible, ALONE.
The claims of Christianity regarding this are not unique, or even original.
All other sacred writings fall short in that they restrict God into or as part of this time-space universe that scientists can explore.
No, they don't.
You've posted this falsehood on Slashdot many times before, even though it is verifiably false. You obviously lack the familiarity you claim to have with other religions, even very closely related ones, and with religion in general. Islam and Judaism make this same claim, and even about roughly the same God! Hinduism and Taoism have very different spins on this idea. Zoroastrianism has exactly the same theological concept (Ahura Mazda, the uncreated creator ) that you just claimed was true only of Christianity. Only one of the few, major counterexamples I just gave is younger than Christianity, and most are *much* older. It is either naive or arrogant of you to think that your religion (in this case, Christianity) is the lone bastion in all human history of people being in some way "reasonable" about their religion, above and beyond how poor that reason actually is.
Jesus Christ is also the ONLY founder of a major religion who claimed or it is claimed on His behalf by eyewitnesses, that He is God come to earth and that he came back physically from the dead.
No, he isn't. There were many of these so-called "messiahs", contemporaneous to the character of Jesus. The story is familiar though: the alleged messiah healed the sick, raised the dead, walked through walls, was persecuted for his religious beliefs, tried by the Romans, crucified by the Romans, ascended to heaven after death, then returned and was witnessed by his followers. Jesus of Nazareth? No, Apollonius of Tyana. There were others, too. Some years later, the prophet Muhammad allegedly demonstrated these powers, and ascended into heaven on a flying horse, and again eyewitness records we have tell us that he alone, of all religious founders met this test.
Why do you keep repeating this same wrong assertions about Christianity? You don't even address this deficiency in your argument; you just say it week after week in discussion after discussion.
As in a court room, nothing historical can be proved absolutely because all court decisions are based on the past.
You're confused about what it means to "prove" something. History is much more accessible to us than the laws of nature. We can be utterly certain that, say, the Battle of Hastings was fought and decided in 1066, and that the Normans won. This is a historical *fact* that is well-established by many independent sources, including actual artifacts (beyond human accounts in varying degrees of reliability). We cannot be utterly certain that, say there are no "black swans" merely because we haven't observed the phenomenon; it's always possible, in principle, that we could come across new information that show our old generalizations to be special cases, even if they were reasonable and performed well when devised.
What the judge or jury can and are asked to do, is to consider the testimony of witnesses and other evidence and then make a decision based on their BELIEF of that evidence.
No, they are asked to infer correctly; to make inferences which are correct even though they have no way of being absolutely certain they are correct.
...everyone's eternal destiny rests in their faith, belief in the testimony of God's Word.
No, it doesn't.
There exists no such deity, and therefore anyone's faith that there does has no bearing at all on their eternal destiny. God doesn't exist just because you think it's so. Life doesn't continue after death just because you think it does, or because you think it can.
But even if you are emotionally u