Given all the basic building blocks of life, is it possible for humans to put together a living entity?
I’m not talking about sparking a monster to life like old Frankenstein did. I mean, could scientists create bacteria, or a single-cell amoeba which we could classify as ‘alive’?
If all that is required at the basest level is the correct proteins and amino acids et al. in the correct arrangement, can this creation be achieved with current technology?
As Blake implies, viruses do not satisfy everyone’s criteria for the definition of ‘living organism’ - they do not consume (as such) and they cannot reproduce for themselves (they do it by hijacking the workings of a living cell).
I wasn’t aware that artificial viruses had been created…
“>>>I wasn’t aware that artificial viruses had been created…”
The scientists obtained the poliovirus DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) sequences from the Internet. Knowing the DNA sequence of the poliomyelitis virus, they assembled its cDNA using oligonucleotides (chemical constituents of DNA) in the laboratory. This synthetic poliovirus cDNA was transcribed (process of synthesis of ribonucleic acid from DNA) to form the poliovirus RNA. This RNA was then allowed to produce the poliovirus by the process of translation (protein synthesis). All these complicated processes occurred in a cell-free, artificial environment in a test tube in their laboratory. http://www.dailystarnews.com/magazine/2002/10/01/tech.htm
So, is it that the complexity of a cell / entity is still too great to be replicated artificially (i.e. only a matter of time) or is it that there is still some unexplainable process or ingredient necessary to bring about ‘life’?
And I don’t mean that to sound like I am asking about the souls of individual cells.
Another BTW question: I read once that scientists were attempting to recreate the exact conditions which they believe existed in the primordial soup to see if life would / could spring from it independently. Whatever happened to this experiment, or is it on-going?
Last I heard (and that was from a creationist pamphlet by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, so exercise caution regarding the accuracy), they managed to create four out of the twenty amino acids necessary for life, by recreating the primordial soup and then running a live electric current through it.
Is/was there not a more recent attempt to replicate the same experiment? I think it was written up in New Scientist a few years ago. Can’t see any sign of it on-line though.
It requires great intelligence to design, assemble and program life. More intelligence than human scientists currently have.
IBM, one of the top companies in the world is trying to reverse engineer life. Here’s what they say:
“The list of genes and proteins of an organism, however, constitute only the ground zero in a pyramid of biological complexity, whose top is life itself. This pyramid is a metaphor for the hierarchy of structures out of which biological function (such as metabolism or replication) arises. Elements at each level in this hierarchy interact with each other to produce a higher level of organization, thus climbing up one step in the pyramid of bio-complexity. It follows that the information of all the genome and all the proteome (which is roughly where we stand now) is insufficient to understand the subtleties of biological function. In order to get a handle to function we need to understand how the building blocks at a given level of organization interact with each other: how proteins interact with both genes and proteins to produce molecular circuits; how these circuits interact with each other to allow for cellular function; how cells interact to produce tissues; how tissues form organs; and finally how organs work together to create a living being.” http://www.research.ibm.com/FunGen/
The phrase “miracle of life” could turn out to be accurate. I believe only God can create life. Humans might be able to, in the future, but the more I look into it the more I doubt humans can reach this goal.
Some of the posts are over my head, but you can find some very interesting discussions on this topic here:
When I was in school a few years back, there was an experiment ongoing, where they took the simplest bacterium known, in terms of number of genes. Then they started knocking out one gene at a time to determine the absolute minimum number of genes required for life. When that was done, they kinda looked at each other and realized that it would be very possible to synthesize this minimum set of genes in the lab and insert it into a cell that had been emptied of DNA, thus, in a sense, creating life.
At this point, they stopped. They put together a panel of scientists, theologians, and philosophers and such to decide whether they should take this next step. Last I heard, this panel was still meeting.
I wish I could provide details as to who and where this was all going on, but it was just one day’s discussion in one of my micro classes. If anyone else has more info, I’d like to see it.
The thing is, translating/replicating DNA ISNT creating life - it’s using tools that already exist (such as DNA polymerase, or ribosomes, etc) in the cell to make existing life different. Emptying the DNA out of a cell and replacing it with another set of DNA isn’t “recreating life”. There are hundreds of thousands of individual proteins and lipids and organelles and other things that all need to be added up together to make a cell - which is, by most definitions, the basic unit of life.
Here’s the conundrum (I NEVER use that word - did I spell it right?):
DNA encodes for proteins, by being read by a protein which sends what it reads to a ribosome, which is made of RNA, which was read off of the DNA. So the first ribosome was made by what? A protein, which read the DNA code for a ribosome. Where did the protein come from? The DNA, which was read by a protein… you get the point. Its a chicken or egg situation. You don’t know which came ffirst.
If the “primordial soup” successfully made 4 amino acids, I suppose in time it could make 15, or 20, or more. But thats one thing research into this doesn’t have - the necessary time. Billions of years was nothing back when life didn’t exist, but now that we’re trying to recreate life, budgets are based on the span of a year or less, and who wants to fund a billion-year research project?
As for what Smeghead said - from that description, it sounds to me like cloning, or genetic modification, or the creation of “knock-out” species of bacteria…this project sounds a bit like all three, and since all three are more or less routine at the bacterial level, I can’t imagine what philospohers have to do with it. But that’s just me.
I think the big issue with the work I was talking about was the fact that the DNA would be entirely synthetic. They’d start with just nucleotides and create an entire genome from scratch, then turn that into a living organism.
I guess…though to me it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. Although the CODE is complex, the DNA molecule itself is suprisingly simple. Seems that that’d be taking a code that they know, and just making it again. I mean, if they already did all that work to knock out genes down to the most basic amount needed, isn’t this just resulting in the same thing? I guess I just don’t see the ethical dilema here…but then, I believe in a chemical origin, not one from a god of any sort. I guess I can imagine some people having a problem with it, but I don’t.
Piffle. Polio fell like a stunned Ox the first time someone tried it. A synthetic genome with a few hundred proteins, modeled after some barely funtional mycoplasma such as this, will likely be feasible within a decade. Obviously, more complex organisms will take a little longer, but there’s no evidence to suggest that custom organisms are in any way beyond our capabilities.
All the evidence to date shows that human scientists cannot create life. When, or probably more accurately IF, a scientist or a team of scientists ever create life they will be first in line for the Nobel Prize. Possibly multiple Nobels.
You can claim it’s easy to create life, if you wish. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for it to happen. It’s beyond our current capabilities.