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NASA Ames Reproduces the Building Blocks of Life In Laboratory
hypnosec writes "Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center have reproduced non-biologically the three basic components of life found in both DNA and RNA — uracil, cytosine, and thymine. For their experiment scientists deposited an ice sample containing pyrimidine — a ring-shaped molecule made up of carbon and nitrogen — on a cold substrate in a chamber with space-like conditions such as very high vacuum, extremely low temperatures, and irradiated the sample with high-energy ultraviolet photons from a hydrogen lamp. Researchers discovered that such an arrangement produces these essential ingredients of life. "We have demonstrated for the first time that we can make uracil, cytosine, and thymine, all three components of RNA and DNA, non-biologically in a laboratory under conditions found in space," said Michel Nuevo, research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. "We are showing that these laboratory processes, which simulate conditions in outer space, can make several fundamental building blocks used by living organisms on Earth."
SETI found nothing .. Maybe an alien civilization is in it's dark ages .. couple of hundred years away from inventing the radio.
Panspermia
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
I reproduced the building blocks of life in a laboratory once, it was awesome but kind of messy and awkward afterwards for a while but we got over it and now we are "just friends" I regret nothing. Now is the time to fight for COMMUNISM, the only road to womens liberation.
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
That is awesome. Scientist were trying to make those chemicals in conditions resembling primordial earth but it actually works in space. But...what how do you get the pyrimidine ? Can you make that in space from other more basic molecules and under what conditions?
A Highly Controlled Environment! Suggest lab really is "space-like"
They failed, however, to make the fourth basic ingredient for life... pizza.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Shouldn't it be called the Google Ames Research Center?
... the three basic components of life found in both DNA and RNA -- uracil, cytosine, and thymine.
The three components present in both DNA and RNA are cytosine, guanine and adenine. Uracil is only present in RNA, and thymine only in DNA.
If the nature of matter is to distribute itself so perfectly randomly that life can coexist, what better concept of God than a turn of events like that?
Matter distribution is not perfectly random. In fact, it tends to clump together into things we call 'planets' and 'stars' and shit.
JustHowHePlannedIt(tm)
*pop*
there goes another gap...
I find the interesting part is "conditions found in space".
Because then life would likely not have been seeded on a some planet as a rare event. Rather, because the components could be be scattered all over, and life could develop all over the place, some planets may even have been successfully seeded repeatedly.
And there may well be extremophiles on Mars that are completely unrelated to life on Earth, as might well be on/in other planets and moons in our solar system.
Yes, and the LHC is nothing like the conditions immediately after the Big Bang. What's your point?
And we shouldn't make plans for tomorrow, because how can we even know there will be a tomorrow? After all, today and all days prior are not at all "tomorrow-like".
And with God you mean Ananke, right. I mean... It's pretty clear this one's hers. The entire result conforms to her modus operandi.
This happened thousands of years before the Genesis. You need to read the bible more carefully.
irradiated with high-energy ultraviolet photons
That's a part of "space-like conditions".
surrounded continuously by doting scientists and elaborate test apparatus
That part is to guarantee success and have a thorough measurement of the process. For the natural process, it is reasonable to assume that it took many hundreds of millions of years before some place (and maybe more than one, over those years) happened to have all those conditions in it at the same time. The point here is that all the things that they've done and all the input materials are the kind that occur naturally. From there it's all statistics.
Nonsense. Everyone on the planet is able to create artificial life. It's called having sex, and they can do it anytime they like. Doesn't mean the invisible sky giant is having sex.
What about guanine and adenine?
"the three basic components of life" is misleading, more like "three of the basic components of life"
The chief component is cytosine... cytosine and guanine. ...Our two chief components are cytosine and guanine...and adenine.... Our three components are cytosine, adenine and cuanine...and thymine.... Our four...no... amongst our components.... amongst our components...are such elements as cytosine, guanine.... I'll come in again.
Life can be defined empirically and that's a good enough of a description. The problem is people debating over what that definition should be. The problem with gravity is not describing it, but figuring out why it exists as it does. They're very different situations.
Most people agree on the basics of life - something that can self replicate and evolve - but it's the details that pose the thorny issues. For example, how particular is it about its environment? Viruses leave most of the work of their reproduction to outside sources, so there are many people who don't want to call them life. But there's a continuous slope between that and something that can survive on nothing more than sunlight, water, CO2 and trace minerals; you don't say that a cat isn't alive because it can't make taurine and has to rely on external entities to do so, for example. And at an even more basic level, how picky must one be about what constitutes "replication"? What if you have imperfect replicators that create entities "similar" to themselves, which may have varying degrees (perhaps frequently "zero") of ability to replicate themselves? Certainly such a thing has the potential to at least lead to life. But is it life? If not then what's the cutoff point in terms of replicative accuracy when you start to call it life and the inaccuracies in its reproduction "evolution"?
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
Until we can define WHAT (precisely) "life" IS
Impossible. The division between life/lifeless is like the edge of a cloud. The closer you zoom in, the fuzzier it gets.
Where was it discredited? There has been much revision of our knowledge of the early atmosphere, but his principles were sound. If you hate science that trys to find the origin of life, go back to church and pray to your diety of choice to prove otherwise. But pleas quit spewing outright lies. Most likely that is a sin in your belief system anyway.
Silence is a state of mime.
Life is characterized by the 4 Fs:
1. Foraging
2. Feeding
3. Filling out
4. Reproduction (trying to not be too coarse here)
For instance we look which common properties two species have, and we calculate when the last common ancestor of those species must have lived, and then we go out and check mineral deposits of the approbriate age to look if we find fossils that are close to what we expect as the common ancestor.
You are asking a philosophical question. What these scientists were investigation was whether or not the building block of life could begin and survive in space. Their results suggest, yes building block of life could begin and yes they could survive in space. That is all they are saying.
Your analogy is pure lunacy.
This isn't a mish mash but then you weren't trying to understand what they discovered.
The experiment was discredited by numerous researchers for (a) being a tautology and (b) excluding data that argued against its conclusions that spontaneous generation of life is indicated. It is tautological because Urey-Miller chose atmospheric composition that provided just the elements necessary to obtain amino acids when no empirical evidence of early atmosphere existed (nor exists today -- it's all conjecture until we perfect the time machine). It excluded contradictory data by ignoring the fact that the generated "precursors" required a tightly controlled environment and the intellect and technical skill of dedicated experts throughout the process.
Finally, the "precursors" themselves are such a minor part of the processes of life as to be inconsequential. It's like finding a sheen of dust on a rock and claiming that the Empire State Building arose spontaneously from just such dust, complete with working elevators and tenant invoicing.
Until we can define WHAT (precisely) "life" IS
Impossible. The division between life/lifeless is like the edge of a cloud. The closer you zoom in, the fuzzier it gets.
And how! By the definition of life back when I was in grade school, we've already created life. But as time moved on, we've refined that to the point that I expect we'll never define anything as human created life. Certainly the religious fundamentalists will never accept it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Because the logically equivalent Urey-Miller apparatus was discredited decades ago, so should this sideshow be.
Part of that was that some important chemicals were not created. The experiments were not the same.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
surrounded continuously by doting scientists and elaborate test apparatus
And if they weren't, you'd be bitching about lack of control, and/or contamination. That's seriously weak, man.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There in no basis for assuming that these conditions would ever occur. It's not statistics, it's wishful thinking. But thanks for pointing out the reason abiogenesists demand an incalculable (and unreproducible) time span of billions of years for their theories to work.
There is a whole lot better chance that those conditions could occur than any/all of the contradicting creation myths of every religion occurred, and you just so happened to be born into the one that is the real one, rather than all the wrong ones.
Don't you have some school board somewhere to infiltrate and force science students to learn creationism?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The experiment was discredited by numerous researchers for (a) being a tautology and (b) excluding data that argued against its conclusions that spontaneous generation of life is indicated.
Ah, the argument from personal incredulity. Okay, here we go. I simply cannot believe you
See how that works?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You can't do useful mathematics on abiogenesis unless you have defined a sequence of events.
claiming that the Empire State Building arose spontaneously from just such dust, complete with working elevators and tenant invoicing.
Ultimately, yes, early building blocks of life led to formation of the Empire State Building. Obviously, many billions of tiny intermediate steps were required. Which one of those tiny steps do you have problems with ?
Idiot.
I'll just leave this here: Ring Species
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
3. Filling out
So... Tax forms really are inevitable?
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Electricity is so simple hey? Those electrons what are they? The reason they have all the effects we call electricity is because they have "charge" and that "charge" creates an "electric field." So what exactly is "charge"? What is an "electric field" and how does "charge" create it?
If you want to get mystical about gravity, we really don't know that much about what electricity actually is deep down at the same level either. A bit higher up though, sure. Just like life: we have decent definitions of it and various people have demonstrated that various aspects of it, like cell walls, can be spontaneously formed from collections of particular chemicals. These guys are working from the other direction, looking at how those chemicals could be manufactured by non-living processes.
What's your stance on whether "any/all" of the historical mainline models of physics regarding... anything... happened?
Oh, that's right, that was an irrational word construction that couldn't happen for anything in any topic.
Welcome back from the Iowa Freedom Summit, Mrs. Palin.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There in no basis for assuming that these conditions would ever occur.
You mean, except for the fact that we observe each of them occurring separately, and are not aware of any reason why having one occur would exclude the other? From those premises alone it follows that it is a statistic certainty that they will all occur at the same time eventually.
I think they forgot the whole gamma radiation bit. Last time I checked NASA said this is how they know they are not seeding mars with life because space radiation is so high energy that it sterilizes the entire spacecraft (Also a bit dubious but in space you will quickly get many many Sv of radiation which in a very short period of time is enough radiation to completely kill anything living or even organic in nature). So I'm not seeing how you get UV light into a very very thick lead alternating with a soft absorber and then more lead shielded ball needed to keep the organic chemicals from denaturing under even higher ionizing radiation exposure for millions of years. The probability you would get viable biological chemicals from space is zero. The longer your in space the more radiation you'll get. Only an atmosphere and magnetic field of a planet would provide enough shielding.
Who said anything about a creation myth? Only you. The validity of abiogenesis has nothing to do with any other theories, it either stands on its own evidence, or it doesn't. Given that there is zero evidence that billions of years accomplishes anything, this is what I would call a "hard vacuum" theory: it has no substance.
The steps that are problematic are the missing ones.
David Berlinski does some very useful math, and he doesn't need to know the sequence of events. He only needs to know that the proposed mechanism is beneficial mutations. His quite lucid illustration shows that the age of the univers is not remotely old enough to accomplish any constructive evolution, and that it's virtually impossible to make any forward progress with increasing complexity owing to the much higher probability of destructive mutations. This applies to chemical synthesis as well as to the never-observed increase in complexity of living things. All observed mutations create a less-complex outcome.
Nobody has observed these processes occurring naturally. Only with carefully crafted conditions and aparatus.
Nobody has observed high-energy ultraviolet photons naturally? Have you ever looked at the sun?
I hope nobody already posted this
http://xkcd.com/638/
By what possible 20th (or 21st) century definition of "life" have we "already created life"?????
We have already made synthetic life, in that we have stitched together DNA and formed it into cells that never existed in nature It of course isn't taking life the whole way back into emergence from mud, but it is indeed something manmade, just not the earliest steps.
http://www.iflscience.com/chem... Not self replicating yet, but hard to imagine that isn't coming soon. It's very likely that given the time scales, life probably didn't look much like what we define as life for quite a while.
Genetic manipulations while possibly a wonderful innovation that might lead to better drugs, far fewer medical problems, etc in the future are still just manipulations of life that already exists.
And? That seems sort of like a non-sequitar to me. Even the synthetic life I cited above was made from already existent parts. And certainly if we ever do form life from mud - even then, it doesn't prove that is how it happened, it just shows one very likely possibility.
We'll probably never have that time machine. But Biology so far has been pretty helpful, so I support the efforts to create artificial life. My money is on succeeding.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.