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Florida Lab Gets Pregnant
Synthetic Biology, a relatively new field, is seeking to find out what happened to a bunch of chemicals to make them capable of supporting a metabolism, replicating, and evolution. A Florida lab is showing some of the most promising advancements in this direction with their AEGIS (Artificially Expanded Genetic Information System) experiment. "AEGIS is not self-sustaining, at least not yet, and with 12 DNA building blocks -- as opposed to the usual four -- there's little chance it will be confused with natural life. Still, Benner is encouraged by the results. 'It's evolving. It's doing what we designed it to do,' said Benner, a biochemist with the Gainesville, Fla.-based Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. In addition to providing an example of how alien life might be cobbled together, synthetic biology has a broad array of uses on the home front."
KFC rolled theirs out years ago.
In addition to providing an example of how alien life might be cobbled together, synthetic biology has a broad array of uses on the home front
Oh yes! Like holding the world hostage!! Now where can I get some mind-controlling synthetic life forms? (don't forget the insulin dependence).
Qxe4
it engulfs its first white lab coated scientist.
Squirrel!
Who wants to bet me $20 they just use this technology to invent the first self-replicating pet-boob?
Isn't that statement eating itself?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
For the sake of argument, if scientists start "guiding" synthetic life through "evolution" in the lab, isn't that ID?
If so, does it boost the ID argument for *our* creation?
Hmmm......
Researchers in a Florida laboratory are working with the most asic building blocks of life to try and understand how biology first arose on Earth â" and how it might appear on other planets.
Seriously, I know these pages are assembled by software from other sources but don't they have spell checking built into them? Lots of otherwise good news sources I read have stupid typos in their online versions. Right now firefox is underlining "asic" for me, pointing out the mistake. It seems like every second article has something like this. It just seems so easy to fix. I wonder why that isn't done.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If she's between 25 and 30, she lied to you. Beware if the biological clock my friend, beware!
Life is not for the lazy.
Green goo actually, or maybe grayish-green goo would be more appropriate.
On a more realistic note, those 12 artificial nucleotides they seem to have put in there probably aren't found in the environment make it unlikely anything to come out of it will get very far.
I do of course realize that "probably" is an issue for some people who seem convinced that any possibility, no matter how small, when it comes to biological nightmare scenarios is an absolute certainty (specifically biology ones, they're more rational when it comes to the chances of the hadron collider destroying the earth). Suprised no one has tagged "iamlegend" or "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" yet.
Anything to come out of those vats would probably need most of the 12 artifical nucleotides, which aren't found in any apreciable quantity outside of the vat. If any gets out it would quickly starve. Not to mention that depending on the conditions that they are evolving under, there might be more immediate problems for anything escaping. Early life evolved under anerobic conditions, oxygen is pretty toxic to cells. They're probably generating these things under anerobic conditions to mimic what were thought to be early conditions of the earth and to maybe encourage things to start growing. I would expect that any bugs growing in this system would be poisoned by oxygen once outside pretty rapidly, much as bacteria from early earth would. Also temperatures are probably much higher in the vats.
Since the vats are -probably- extremely rich in all 12 artificial nucleotides, devoid of oxygen, and very warm in all places, there wouldn't be any advantage or reason for the bugs to evolve ways of overcoming those conditions. There'd be no reason for them to develop ways of making their own artificial nucleotides since they're provided. In fact that would probably be a detriment, since any way of converting one of the natural 4 would be costly to the cell in terms of energetics and would have no gain, they'd quickly be out-proliferated by their bretheren who don't waste energy on things like that. In other words, once stepping out of the vat, they'd be presented with an extremely harsh environment they're totally unprepared for.
I am of course making some assumptions there. I guess we can't rule it out entirely, but there are millions of unlikely apocalypses you can't completely rule out.
Nope! That's why it's news.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
A virus that infects single cells which have 8 nucleotides I don't is a virus I laugh at.
I think those are not unreasonable assumptions, providing they're maintained in that environment. The more interesting (and much more nasty) experiment would be to let the critters breed for many generations, letting the fittest gain control of their little ecosystem, then slowly introduce elements of the external environment in, making the habitat *less* supportive. Eventually, and I'm sure this would take a long time (several generations of scientists, say), you would produce an organism potentially capable of surviving outside the vat.
At that point, of course, it would still have to put up with 4 billion years worth of evolution on the outside, with organisms of considerably more complexity in finding and utilizing food sources. A good example are nylon-eating bacteria. In the space of no more than forty years, a population of bacteria learned how to eat a food that hadn't even existed prior to 1935.
Any organism we make in a vat would, I suspect, not last terribly long on the outside.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Particularly in the Deep South, where barbeque is almost a religion on its own.
People for Eating Tasty Animals, anyone?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
You realize that microbes already in nature have been evolving the moment they've showed up?
Any sort of creation we make in the lab right now will ultimately be weaker than any successful microbe.
Green goos already exist, they cause common colds.
Why do ludites (not accusing you) think artifical nanotech would NOT be eaten by the natural nanotech found around and within us? The people who think scientists can build such a machine are the ones who are guilty of hubris, not the scientists.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Mod parent up, and enjoy this best of craigslist post about paternity -- "Vasectomy: $400. Speechless look on her face: priceless."
To quote Dr. Ian Malcom: "Life. Finds. A. Way."
It was almost like Jeff Goldblum was channeling Shatner, but acting him as more human than he was when not acting.
ivan
Like to brew? Want to talk about it? Brattlebrew: groups.yahoo.com/group/brattlebrew
when they trounce cell theory. A bunch of chemicals which preferentially catalyze feedstock to produce identical/similar chemicals is interesting, and very difficult to do from scratch, but I want CELLS! Self enclosed systems.
I suppose cells are not really needed for life, but it seems pretty clear that they provide certain advantages, especially in terms of not just getting washed away.
On the topic of ID: just because there is a chemical reaction that seems to be approaching the fuzzy definition of life we've developed so far, and that reaction is intelligently designed, does not really have anything to do with the real problems that exist with pushing Intelligent Design as an alternate theory to evolution for explaining life.
This comes up a lot when people want to talk about both religion and science. They exist in different domains. Religion does not propose testable, predictive hypotheses. Science does not purport to provide meaning for existence.
Intelligent Design is not scientific.
Genetic evolution is not religious.
People can chose to reconcile religion and science, or pit them against each other. It is only when one or both are misused that there is conflict.
That said, the misuse and conflict almost always comes from the religious side. That is based on personal experience and I have no numbers to back it up.
ivan
Like to brew? Want to talk about it? Brattlebrew: groups.yahoo.com/group/brattlebrew
Diary of creating new life