-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: August 21, 2007 12:45:27 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Artificial Life™ Likely in 10 Years (While We're
Exterminating All REAL Life)
Artificial life™ likely in 3 to 10 years
AP Photo: This undated photo
provided by ProtoLife Srl.of
Venice, Italy, shows vesicles,
artificial membranes for cells
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Mon Aug 20, 1:49 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_sc/artificial_life_5
WASHINGTON - Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying
to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.
Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from
someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."
"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about
it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of
Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a
technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways —
in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."
That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals
in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing,
you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.
"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our
place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the
few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our
role."
And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day
offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from
fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic
waste.
Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic
life:
• A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out,
allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.
• A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell,
enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental
changes.
• A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as
food and then changes it into energy.
One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical
School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will
report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is
"not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.
Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting
nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic
system.
His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add
nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution
could simply take over.
"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do
the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.
In Gainesville, Fla., Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the
Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that
problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists
of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as
A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs.
Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.
Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that
could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will
be a very long time before that is a problem.
"When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll
be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the
lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our
imagination could this happen."
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