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Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years
by Seth Borenstein, AP
Thanks to Mark for the link.
Reposted from:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070819/artificial_life.html?.v=1
Scientists Around World in Race to Create Artificial Life; Success Likely in 3 to 10 Years
WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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 life 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."
Reposted from:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070819/artificial_life.html?.v=1
Scientists Around World in Race to Create Artificial Life; Success Likely in 3 to 10 Years
WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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 life 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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Posted: Sunday, August 19, 2007 | PermalinkComments 1 - 50 of 50 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #64370 by BAEOZ on August 19, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Biz:DESIGNING an artificial cell does not lend a shred of credibility to the notion that life arose RANDOMLY.
Who said anything about randomness? Evolution isn't random. And abiogenesis posits self-replicating chemicals that undergo natural selection of the evolutionary nature. Not random.
Other Comments by BAEOZ
3. Comment #64371 by TylerJames on August 19, 2007 at 8:20 pm
I think the problem with your argument is in your initial assumption. I doubt very much that those in the scientific community would claim that this solves the mystery of how life originated. But it certainly shows that non-living material can give rise to life given the right conditions and that it does not take the intervention of a god in order to accomplish this. Which I'm sure everyone will agree is a very exciting discovery indeed.
Other Comments by TylerJames
4. Comment #64372 by Janus on August 19, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Yup. It's not about abiogenesis, it's about demonstrating once and for all that there is nothing mystical or supernatural about life. Biology reduces to chemistry, chemistry reduces to physics. This is already obvious to most scientifically literate people, but the creation of artificial life will prove it even to uneducated laymen. Other Comments by Janus
5. Comment #64373 by roach on August 19, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Janus,I doubt that. I bet that plenty of uneducated laymen will latch onto the idea that life must have been designed. I've noticed that many people don't have a problem ignoring the issue of an infinite regress. And the fact that the new artificial life is "going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab...But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen." will likely encourage the theological idea that God is the supreme designer and infinitely more intelligent (yet somehow simpler) than us humans.
Switching gears. The idea that abiogenesis is bad science is completely absurd.
Other Comments by roach
6. Comment #64375 by Janus on August 19, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Well, of course they'll shift the goalposts once life has been artificially created, in the same way that many creationists became theistic evolutionists after Darwin. But even so it will be a victory, however incomplete. You'd be surprised how many people still hold to a brand of God-powered vitalism. Other Comments by Janus
7. Comment #64376 by roach on August 19, 2007 at 8:46 pm
You could very well be right. I guess we'll have to wait 3 to 10 years.Other Comments by roach
8. Comment #64378 by OkiMike on August 19, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Bizzaro Dawkins,I don't think anyone is saying that our ability to create artificial life as described above is being pursued with the intention of "proving" evolution.
The evidence for the evolution of life is a given and would make work that these groups are doing pretty pointless if evolution didn't, in fact, occur and work how we know it works.
This is but another example of humans making applications that use our knowledge of evolution in an effort to address real-world problems.
For all the shouting that the religious community does at the scientific community, I have yet to see any real-world applications from religion and an answer to why evolution works anyway when we use it to make applications.
Other Comments by OkiMike
9. Comment #64379 by John P on August 19, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Interesting. It motivated me to blog. Here's my modest take on it:http://spaninquis.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/the-end-of-religion-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine
Other Comments by John P
10. Comment #64380 by Bizarro Dawkins on August 19, 2007 at 9:43 pm
"Who said anything about randomness? Evolution isn't random."And who said anything about evolution?
Laying that aside, I've always had a hard time swallowing this ill-conceived argument. Natural selection involves two main factors: the organism, and the environment. The environment, in effect, molds the organism into the necessary functional elements required to survive. However, the question remains: how did the environment come to exist? Was its creation not a purely random event? The Sahara desert is only a desert because certain perfectly random atmospheric factors dictated that a dry, hot spot will exist in X spot on Earth. Therefore, if the environmental factor of natural selection is built on purely random processes, then I fail to see how anything non-random could come to exist from it.
Now you could argue that within the context of the environment, natural selection is not random. Of course, any ninny with half a brain can figure this out. However, I believe that this argument merely manipulates simplistic concepts to make evolution seem like a more intuitive concept that it really is. Evolution, being built on purely random sequence of events, is still a random process in the larger sense.
"And abiogenesis posits self-replicating chemicals that undergo natural selection of the evolutionary nature."
Not quite. Natural selection involves the manipulation of a species genome; abiogenesis seeks to explain how that genome came to exist in the first place.
"I think the problem with your argument is in your initial assumption."
What do you think Dr. Bedau meant then? In the context, I think his statement can only imply that creating artificial life will solve the mystery of how life came to exist on Earth.
"But it certainly shows that non-living material can give rise to life given the right conditions…."
That's tantamount to saying that metal can give rise to Ferraris given the right conditions because we can create Ferraris in car factories. Baloney.
"…and that it does not take the intervention of a god in order to accomplish this."
That's not the argument. Notice how intelligent design isn't called supernatural design. I only argue that life reflects an intelligent force of will. I believe this Will to be the God of the Bible, but for the purposes of this argument, the above statement is irrelevant. This experiment still demonstrates the necessity of intelligent involvement in the creation of life.
Other Comments by Bizarro Dawkins
11. Comment #64382 by Spinoza on August 19, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Evolution, being built on purely random sequence of events, is still a random process in the larger sense.
That's false.
It isn't built on "purely random sequence [sic] of events" and it isn't "still a random process" in ANY sense EXCEPT if you think "random" means "not the result of intelligent purposive Aristotelian formal causation".
If THAT'S what is meant by random, then evolution is random...
But it isn't random efficient causation, it's entirely determined efficient causation.
Bizarro Dawkins, I'm sorry, but you just don't really understand what you're talking about.
Other Comments by Spinoza
12. Comment #64384 by RonnieG on August 19, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Damn, what the deuce do they actually teach over at Liberty U?I remember going to boy's state there like 7 years ago. It must be that the campus is so butt ugly that if any "ninny with half a brain" stays there for an extended period of time you lose some sense of reality, at least thats how I started feeling then, uggghhh. Well, enemas and match boxes...
(Off topic rant over)
Other Comments by RonnieG
13. Comment #64385 by Ev3nt H0riz0n on August 19, 2007 at 10:22 pm
This shows that life designed or not cannot exist without evolution. The designed life would first have to be able to multiply, pass on its characteristic information, and it must be able to mutate. Actually the third must is an effect of the second and first so it is inevitable just on widely varying timescales. No matter how badly designed the organism made, once it is able to do this it will self correct through natural selection. The process is always biased towards this corrective adaptation and is not random. Although, if you rewound time a billion years back when multicellular life first appeared then ran it forward back to our time. I would pretty much guarantee that humans wouldn't be here, but you will see completely different organisms filling the same niches. Essentially, the only reason why we have four limbs is because the fish we evolved from had four fins. Other Comments by Ev3nt H0riz0n
14. Comment #64387 by el.kundo on August 19, 2007 at 10:46 pm
bizarro,you said
what scientific evidence is there to suggest that the first life was the result of the process used to create artificial life?
There's none, I suppose. But that's not the point here. even if the way the scientists use to create life isn't the way it happend on earth some billion years ago, at least these experiments show, that a process of such a kind is possible. And, I think there are even good reasons to suggest that the "real" abiogenesis was quite similar to the one in a lab.
Notice how intelligent design isn't called supernatural design. I only argue that life reflects an intelligent force of will. I believe this Will to be the God of the Bible
Come on, everybody knows that ID is just creationism in disguise. the followers of these ideas just try eagerly to avoid any mentioning of god to keep a scientific touch. but when it comes down to "what/who is this intelligent force?" their answer is god, as is yours.
The main achievement of such experiments would be to show, that no supernatural intervention is necessary to create life on earth, no matter how the real process looked like.
Other Comments by el.kundo
15. Comment #64389 by Cairnarvon on August 19, 2007 at 10:56 pm
I assume the implication here is that once we have DESIGNED artificial life, then we have solved the mystery as to how life could have arisen in the first place. (...)
If they actually designed the life they're trying to create in the sense that they map out every atom in advance, you might have a point in saying this isn't very relevant to abiogenesis.
However, it's looking like they're just adding simple organic molecules (and you don't need pre-existing life to get those) together in the hopes that that life will kick-start itself, making some educated guesses as to what those molecules would have to be, so you don't.
And, as people have pointed out, nobody's looking to this as the final word on abiogenesis. You're attacking a straw man.
And also:
Natural selection involves the manipulation of a species genome
That's bullshit.
It's not the only thing about your comments here that is (by far), but that in particular is a pet peeve of mine.
You don't need a fully developed modern genome to be subject to natural selection, as would be obvious to anyone who's actually bothered to think about it.
Other Comments by Cairnarvon
16. Comment #64400 by pissinintothewind on August 20, 2007 at 1:28 am
Bizzaro Dawkins; re the necessity of intelligent involvement in the creation of life.... round a round a round we go....I feel quite dizzy..Your prompt first posting suggests this news may pose a threat, do not worry, you will go to your death bed still believing in non sense. what it will do is give yet one more reason for millions of people not to believe! Excellent and far reaching news.Other Comments by pissinintothewind
17. Comment #64404 by mmurray on August 20, 2007 at 1:52 am
"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."
Let's hope this doesn't turn out to be one of the great all time failures of the imagination.
Michael
Other Comments by mmurray
18. Comment #64405 by Prufrock on August 20, 2007 at 2:27 am
For me science has two objectives: First, it must provide accurate, testable models which not only explain physical phenomena, but must also have some kind of precictive aspect to it, i.e. I muat be able to make some prediction about behaviour of physical phenomena as a result of the models created. Quantum Mechanics and Einsteinian physics satisfy this criterion completely. Secondly, I should be able to exploit this model in order to create new products. I think, Bizarro, if you held these ideas in mind you would be able to see more clearly why ID leads us nowhere and scientific thought around evolution leads us to more tangible evidence of life's structures. The above article informs us of developments which not only adds a little more evidence to the likelihood that reason and science is taking us towards what is true, but it also throws doubt, if any was needed, that we don't need superintelligent designers to create life and that the building blocks we have uncovered suffices. It makes sense for us, therefore, to continue exploring these avenues for truth and drives another nail into the coffin of ID as a way of explaining the universe and our place in it. Just as importantly, new tools can be contemplated to solve a set of problems which have dogged mankind. Naturally, if you don't think fighting disease using models that actually do something constructive and approximate more closely to reality is good, then communication with you will be difficult. There's no point me being further dragged into a discussion on evolution v ID; as far as I'm concerned the jury is in and the verdict has been given. The overwhelming evidence shows that ID, Creationism, God is absolutely not guilty ... of anything; not a thing, except creating a market for products trying to resolve the confusions created by believing without evidence.Other Comments by Prufrock
19. Comment #64406 by scooternyc on August 20, 2007 at 2:34 am
"This experiment still demonstrates the necessity of intelligent involvement in the creation of life." http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
Replication evidence in science is the "lock and key" foundation for a theory standing up to scrutiny. In this case, nothing to do with design and everything to do with falsifiability of evolution through natural selection and variation as observed through environmental pressures.
Besides, the simpler explanation is right in front of you:
Do you not think you've evolved from the age of 8 years old to who you are today?
I hate to break it to you, but THAT'S EVOLUTION.
Other Comments by scooternyc
20. Comment #64411 by Philip1978 on August 20, 2007 at 2:53 am
Biz, Humans created their gods, humans are possibly about to create artificial life,if you are looking for a designer look no further than human beings!
Philip
Other Comments by Philip1978
21. Comment #64416 by zasurein on August 20, 2007 at 3:08 am
Life was obviously designed; by abiogenesis or whichever process will we find to have begun life. And life was improved/modified/further designed by evolution. Evolution is far more logical than any type of supernatural being and many many orders of magnitude more likely. Even if life had been designed by a 'God', it would be hard to see how it would not have evolved since then. And even if there were a god, evolution is a far more efficient and effective way of checking that life 'works' than supernatural design. So really, thsoe who believe in such a god implicate that a near on impossibly complex being exists for no reason whatsoever. Humans look to human-like 'supernatural' beings for an explanation of design, why couldn't completely natural processes do the same job of 'design'?Other Comments by zasurein
22. Comment #64420 by Prufrock on August 20, 2007 at 3:22 am
Someone's got to help me. I'm turning into a bitter, intolerant, peeved atheist and not a long suffering, live and let live atheist. The more I read the intelligent, well educated, informed and interesting entries on this website, the more banal, absurd and ludicrous seems the claim that some supernatural deity plays us like puppets and acts like some moral CCTV camera. It is so insulting! We humans are intelligent and design stuff like cars, aeroplanes, computers, rockets and now understand enough to start on the impossibly long journey to create artificial life and someone wants me to believe it's not really us that's doing it; it's his imaginary friend who's behind it all. Zasurein: I'm not sure what you mean by 'Life was obviously designed, ..."Other Comments by Prufrock
23. Comment #64422 by Duff on August 20, 2007 at 3:23 am
Bizarro,Always good to see you here. If good for nothing else, your logic, or lack thereof, is at least good for a chuckle.
Other Comments by Duff
24. Comment #64429 by RobertlewisIR on August 20, 2007 at 3:55 am
It's certainly very interesting, and I'm excited to see what happens with it.I've been looking at some of the reactions from non-scientific groups, and I think it's very interesting indeed. I haven't been following the creationists enough to see what they have to say about it, but a lot of people tend to view it negatively. I've had to point out repeatedly that creating simple life in a lab isn't really the same thing as Dr. Frankenstein's experiments.
Other Comments by RobertlewisIR
25. Comment #64430 by steve99 on August 20, 2007 at 3:56 am
You don't need a fully developed modern genome to be subject to natural selection
Indeed. Natural selection has been demonstrated even with reasonably simple RNA molecules.
Other Comments by steve99
26. Comment #64431 by steve99 on August 20, 2007 at 4:02 am
Of course, abiogenesis is bad science anyway, so I imagine that atheists are in a pickle regardless.
I do like these God of the Gaps arguments. I wonder what the attitude of people like Bizarro will be when methods of abiogenesis have been fully worked out? I guess it might be like the Intelligent Design supporters who still talk about irreducible complexity - flat denial of the facts.
Other Comments by steve99
27. Comment #64432 by jonecc on August 20, 2007 at 4:02 am
We've been off on a bizarro diversion on the subject of evolution, but it's vitalism which would be wounded by a successful result.Scientists take chemical building blocks, they do their stuff, and a living being results. At no point was any kind of vital spark added. Therefore, there is clearly no need to add a vital spark to create life. As Janus said, "Biology reduces to chemistry, chemistry reduces to physics."
When it comes to evolution, we have other evidence.
Other Comments by jonecc
28. Comment #64436 by irate_atheist on August 20, 2007 at 4:47 am
Prufrock -So you too understand why I am 'irate'.
Trust me, the process is pretty much irreversible. Prepare to be really pissed off by a lot of people a lot of the time. The best I manage is outwardly calm, inwardly seething. Usually.
Other Comments by irate_atheist
29. Comment #64461 by prettygoodformonkeys on August 20, 2007 at 6:15 am
"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened" This is the sentence that will come back to bite the ID 'theorists' if these experiments work. This describes an amazing, interesting life without religion - and in fact, describes life as it actually has been for hundreds and thousands of years. I'm almost praying that this works.
What a great way to start the week!
Other Comments by prettygoodformonkeys
30. Comment #64475 by Dower on August 20, 2007 at 7:28 am
I only argue that life reflects an intelligent force of will. I believe this Will to be the God of the Bible ...
Belief proves nothing.
Other Comments by Dower
31. Comment #64478 by scooternyc on August 20, 2007 at 7:44 am
Philip1978 - you make me laugh! Thanks.Prufrock and irate atheist: best advice is to not victimize yourself by the idiocy of others.
How?
By continuing your education about the subject to the extent that you can speak about it from so many angles and refute the mythology.
This past year alone I've read: God Delusion, Letter To A Christian Nation, End of Faith, The God Hypothesis, god is not great, Mememachine, 40 days and 40 nights, Breaking the Spell and just getting into Why Darwin Matters and Creationism's Trojan Horse(The Wedge of Intelligent Design).
Plus I listen to podcasts, watch youtube/google videos of our "leaders" in debate and read additional posts from some great people here and on other sites who give great information, as well.
Additionally, continue to post and develop your ideas, comments and thoughts because there are others who may not write anything but are reading and learning much from your posts.(It's how I got started on this subject)
Finally, get involved somehow politically to understand the nature of both parties and then make your voice heard.(even if you're just posting on other sites)
Nothing is more satisfying than being able to speak about something without the emotional Molotov-cocktail that gets thrown into the fray so often, just by having facts at your fingertips.
Truly you have a choice - never confuse a difficult choice with no choice at all.
When a person feels like they have no choice they victimize themselves, get emotional and become ineffective.
As long as we have intelligent people continuing to arm themselves with facts and historical references, then speaking clarity to truth does eventually replicate enough that it can silence or quiet an often rabid animal that religion demonstrates to be.
Hope this helps. I'm sure others have ideas, as well.
Other Comments by scooternyc
32. Comment #64484 by scooternyc on August 20, 2007 at 8:17 am
"If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them."Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789),
Other Comments by scooternyc
33. Comment #64486 by Dower on August 20, 2007 at 8:44 am
Scooter, add Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason" to your library. Paine was a Diest, but he sure did a good job of using the Bible to refute the Bible.Other Comments by Dower
34. Comment #64489 by Overdose on August 20, 2007 at 8:55 am
Instead of wondering about an 'intelligent design' behind life, you should notice that this discovery proves that there is no such thing as a 'soul'. As much as people try to deny it, the fact is that life is completely meaningless and now there is proof. Yes, when someone close to you dies, it's completely meaningless, as meaningless as a bunch of atoms ceasing to interact, which is what happens in fact.Other Comments by Overdose
35. Comment #64497 by fonex_86 on August 20, 2007 at 9:32 am
That's not the argument. Notice how intelligent design isn't called supernatural design. I only argue that life reflects an intelligent force of will. I believe this Will to be the God of the Bible, but for the purposes of this argument, the above statement is irrelevant. This experiment still demonstrates the necessity of intelligent involvement in the creation of life.
Hey fuckwit, get a brain, or get lost. I'll tell your mom you're skipping potty training.
How the fuck does this experiment "demonstrate the necessity (my emphasis) of intelligent involvement in the creation of life"? If anything, it shows that all you dim theist pricks can do is whine about how weak, dumb, and useless the human race is. Wasn't it some smart-aleck priest who said that humans could never create cells? Then we do, and those turd-brained imbeciles whine about something else. Go take your god of the gaps to the toilet, where he belongs with the rest of the turd.
Dammit, people (I'm not even sure I should call him that) like BD really tick me off.
Other Comments by fonex_86
36. Comment #64508 by macros_man on August 20, 2007 at 10:13 am
The whole point (re: abiogenesis) is that if we can know what materials and conditions will lead to the emergence of carbon-based life, then if we can have an idea of what the early conditions were like on earth, then we can estimate what the probability was of life emerging on earth.In the experiments, the 'design' is necessary, because specific steps are required to generate life - and we are relying on our intelligence to determine what those steps must be - and how to actualize them.
For abiogenesis, on the other hand, the emergence of life depends on the probability of the life-generating steps to occur, and on the sample size of the events taking place.
For these scientists attempting to generate life, they are perhaps generating thousands of samples - trying to ensure the correct steps occur.
In earth's past, however, there may have been trillions upon trillions of these 'samples' taking place. Of course - in this case, the 'samples' are completely random... since there is no intelligence guiding their unfolding... but the ability for this large sample of random events to generate life may indeed be just as fruitful, if not more-so, than our concentrated efforts applied to a relatively minuscule set of samples.
But if we can know the steps required, and how likely these conditions are to have existed in earth's past... then we can estimate a confidence interval of the emergence of life on earth. This confidence interval depends on our knowledge of the ways life could have emerged, and our knowledge of early-earth conditions. We may never know the exact specifics of how all life on earth emerged... but this retrospective estimation would be very valuable.
Aside from verifying abiogenesis, there are many present-day applications of this research - and in particular, is the ability to generate organisms that are not subject to the same limitations which are contingencies of the specific way(s) that carbon-based life happened to emerge on earth.
However - I don't think that our exploitation of the abilities of existing organism structures has really been out-stripped, so as to justify the ability to actually create new ones.
For example... we could probably just re-engineer existing organisms to find biological cures for things such as cancer... and that this would probably be much more practical than trying to design a whole new life-form from scratch.
Other Comments by macros_man
37. Comment #64511 by gd_edi on August 20, 2007 at 10:40 am
Thats amazing! I had no idea that we were even close. Wonders never cease...We can show that we are both profoundly ingenius and utterly meaningless :)
Hmmm, so my parents were lying when they said I was special...
Other Comments by gd_edi
38. Comment #64516 by Robert Maynard on August 20, 2007 at 11:17 am
Exciting article, but I don't see why a discovery like this would render life (any more) meaningless, unless you were resting on notions of special creation to begin with and had to adjust your philosophy. Even once we have a formidable understanding of abiogenesis, and can set artificial parameters which will consistently yield compounds which will form varieties of replicating structures, the conditions from which any replicators can emerge remain fantastically fragile and rare within the scope of our Vast and very radioactive Universe. Even if it's easy for life to emerge in the right conditions, the right conditions themselves are clearly NOT easy to find.
So if we are measuring significance by rarity, replicators are always going to be important and special elements in the universe. Special to who? Well, special to a certain tier of replicators who have developed to look upon their own agency, circumstances, and operational imperatives and say "This is a neat setup, huh?"
What I mean is that we impute specialness onto life - we usually don't see a humans death simply as the cessation of atomic interactions, as Overdose glibly put it (mainly because it isn't, actually..). We can regard things like death how we want to. Actually, we might not even have much of a conscious choice - we seem hardwired for empathy, and grief seems an unavoidable "side effect" of death.
It's certainly illuminating to have some understanding of what life and death actually are, at the chemical and physical level, but this claim that life (as opposed to the Universe) is "meaningless" is ultimately just as subjective and emotional an assertion as the claim that life is a karmic journey woven by the stars.
Other Comments by Robert Maynard
39. Comment #64522 by el.kundo on August 20, 2007 at 12:56 pm
scooternyc, you said
Do you not think you've evolved from the age of 8 years old to who you are today?
I hate to break it to you, but THAT'S EVOLUTION.
sorry, but I must correct you here. this isn't evolution, it's development. evolution in a scientific sense (which, I assume is the one we're talking about) takes far more time than a couple of years and changes a species but not a certain individual.
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40. Comment #64524 by ghostbuster on August 20, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Now, now,now....when electrically charged dust is immersed in ionized gas, that dust forms crystals and spirals, possibly double-helices identical to DNA structures. Scientists are now speculating that the dust particles in Jupiter and Saturn's rings form these patterns (and possibly life). Here atheists and christians can agree--dust to dust--however, I refuse to believe that we are therefore the products of God having a bad case of gas.Other Comments by ghostbuster
41. Comment #64526 by scooternyc on August 20, 2007 at 1:22 pm
"sorry, but I must correct you here. this isn't evolution"Actually, over time science will reveal that indeed, on a quantum physics level we are evolving by the very nature of the affect the world has on us and us on the world within our cellular make up and how those cells change given certain environmental processes over time.
Let's see what happens, but I appreciate your kind correction.
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42. Comment #64566 by prettygoodformonkeys on August 20, 2007 at 5:54 pm
scooternyc: even under the effects of two G&T's I know:1) "over time science will reveal.." means less than nothing;
2) no one understands quantum physics; and
3) we won't be here (or anywhere) to see what happens.
Bizarro: 3 - 10 years, all your arguments will have evaporated. just the fact that it is proven possible, under a combination of earth conditions, for self-replication to have begun, immediately makes it infinitely more probable than "sky guy did it".
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43. Comment #64570 by Overdose on August 20, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Robert Maynard, I didn't claim was meaningless 'as opposed to the universe' but instead just as meaningless as the universe, it may seem obvious to you, but there are still many (religious) people who try to 'paint' life with a meaning.I was just explaining that it was proven that life can be made without adding a 'soul' and thus all those 'special meaning' theories can finally be silenced with irrefutable proof.
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44. Comment #64579 by Rational_G on August 20, 2007 at 7:08 pm
You don't even have to make life from scratch to come up with "synthetic" life. J Craig Venter and his team have already turned one species of bacteria into another, modifying the code as it were.Pretty exciting stuff and promises to benefit us greatly.
We are learning how to write the genetic code.
As to how it all got started, that's a separate question - one worth pursuing via observation and experiment as well.
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45. Comment #64587 by Robert Maynard on August 20, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Overdose, glad to hear it. There are few things lamer than a nihilist. :Plife can be made without adding a 'soul' and thus all those 'special meaning' theories can finally be silenced with irrefutable proof.However, I'm still not sure that that is what this would demonstrate. While just being able to achieve synthetic life is poisonous to the notion that life requires supernatural intervention, it is still nowhere near being able to demonstrate that life does not require any special intervention (ie. by a lab full of geniuses), but only certain sets of natural conditions. Abiogenesis is the still the big ticket, as far as I'm concerned.
Besides this, in Christian theology at least, only humans are given "immortal souls", so the creation of soulless bacteria isn't likely to ruffle any feathers.
I fear that none of these awesome things will blow their minds, even if we some day go all the way to building a friggin' human from scratch. It just doesn't seem to penetrate. I'd bet you any sum that when the first phylogenetic tests fully and confidently demonstrated our close cousinship with chimpanzees and bonobos, years ago, people were saying the same things we're saying now.
"Aha! Proof that our closest living relatives are chimpanzees! They won't be able to hold onto their silly beliefs about special creation now!"
But it didn't ruffle any feathers, just a huff, or a smirk, or a shrug.
It's really comparable to hoping you'll disillusion a person who thinks Elvis is still alive, by showing them autopsy photos, or digging Elvis's fucking corpse out of the ground and tossing it limply at his feet. *shrug* "What can I say, Robert? That's not The King."
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46. Comment #64601 by hungarianelephant on August 21, 2007 at 1:42 am
As little more than a footnote to Robert Maynard's post, it's worth remembering that it was The Origin of Species which caused such a ruckus, and not The Descent of Man. Apparently Christian theology is far more upset about the notion that living creatures did not all spring into being at once but changed over time, than that we are descended from apes. The uncomfortable conclusion that we are apes is avoided by deeming, on the basis of no evidence, humans alone to have an immortal soul. (Though it does create scope for a little cognitive dissonance when a God-botherer has to explain to a small child why his deceased beloved pet guinea-pig hasn't gone to heaven.) Other Comments by hungarianelephant
47. Comment #64616 by irate_atheist on August 21, 2007 at 2:53 am
Scooter (31) - As someone, like yourself (one would hazard a guess) who has read/owns these glorious additions to literature, the problem is that the majority of people are impervious to reason.
No matter how knowledgeable and prepared one is, it is difficult to win a debate with someone who is too stupid to realise when they have lost.
The only kind of evidence most people really understand - and lend credence to - is anecdotal evidence (to wit, the recent MMR/Autism debacle in the UK).
As one medical Professor said to RD on 'The Enemies of Reason' last night when discussing peoples belief in homepathy etc. - "It makes you want to weep."
Or as one man put it so eloquently:
"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think." - Horace Walpole
Our choice is therefore to laugh or cry. Sometimes it's a difficult choice to make.
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48. Comment #64760 by scrub on August 21, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Long time reader, first time poster.I don't think the creation of self-replicating wetlife adds too much to either side of the abiogenesis debate...ID proponents will argue that intelligence was used and that's obviously "cheating" when it comes to disproving ID. And as already stated, disproving ID is not the an intended goal of this research.
I'm more interested in how different this life might be, especially if the 8 "new" bases (tripling the current number) are added to the mix. Could that give rise to faster developement of genome complexity....SUPER-LIFE? How will the scientists "let evolution do the rest" to create useful (or even naturally viable) organisms without having to wait a few million years for evolution to take it's course? Manipulating their environmetns can only do so much...right? And why not just take existing single-cellular organisms and manipulate their evolution to do these tasks such as atmospheric carbon reduction or toxic waste comsumption?
I'm no biologist, so hopefully someone here can speculate on these questions even though the article says the effects are "impossible to predict"
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49. Comment #65216 by Yorker on August 23, 2007 at 7:53 am
29. Comment #64566 by prettygoodformonkeys "...I'm almost praying that this works."
Don't worry and don't pray, it will work however long it takes. Humanity, if it exists long enough, will be able to do everything that's possible to do, the only question is whether we should do things. We must of necessity advance, stagnation is not an option. Bleating religites who refuse to face facts will simply be ignored by reality and their stagnant, static, out-of-date doctrine will simply wither and die, it has already begun.
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50. Comment #65813 by MorituriMax on August 26, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Bizarro Dawkins said"Who said anything about randomness? Evolution isn't random."
You did, in your first post..
As ridiculous as I feel pointing this out, DESIGNING an artificial cell does not lend a shred of credibility to the notion that life arose RANDOMLY.
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1. Comment #64368 by Bizarro Dawkins on August 19, 2007 at 8:07 pm
"This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."I assume the implication here is that once we have DESIGNED artificial life, then we have solved the mystery as to how life could have arisen in the first place. I find it hard to believe that anyone with a PhD could make such a short-sighted and assumptive statement. As ridiculous as I feel pointing this out, DESIGNING an artificial cell does not lend a shred of credibility to the notion that life arose RANDOMLY. Notice please the stark dichotomy between the two words in caps.
Assuming that we are able to create an artificial cell within the next 10 years or so, what scientific evidence is there to suggest that the first life was the result of the process used to create artificial life? How can we know? To use this experiment in support of abiogenesis is just bad science. Of course, abiogenesis is bad science anyway, so I imagine that atheists are in a pickle regardless.
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