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.'"

Comments

Here's an NPR story

[Seakip18]

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.

Re:Here's an NPR story

[ortholattice]

An article that provides a little more technical detail is Chemists edge closer to recreating early life. In particular, it mentions that the complexity of the system is only about 140 nucleotides, which I find quite amazing. By contrast, the simplest known independently self-reproducing organism (i.e. not a virus, etc. dependent on a host and using the host's reproduction machinery) is the Mycoplasma genitalium with 582970 base pairs of DNA. So this new system shows that independent self-reproduction is possible with dramatically reduced complexity.

Andrew Crosse

[Miamicoastguard]

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

Not life...not even close

[dtjohnson]

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.

Re:Not life...not even close

[Anonymous Coward]

You quoted the article, but you didn't read it. This is a huge breakthrough. As in Nobel Prize level. An RNA molecule that is able to directly self-replicate has never been seen before. Your first link is to a structure of an RNA enzyme, not an RNA that is able to make more copies of itself. You're equating a machine that makes lampshades to a lampshade making lampshades. The other link, just because I don't know exactly how the Sun came to be means that it doesn't shine? What exactly is the point of this?

Unintelligent design

[tgibbs]

the enzymes are being intelligently designed . . .

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.