Scientists 3-10 years away from creating life.

Trippyhippy

Trippyhippy

est. 1981
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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8R4H0Q00&show_article=1

AP said:
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 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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Penis + Vagina = LifeMaybe?

On a serious note bro, this is kinda creepy but cool.

Very interesting to see how far this kind of stuff gets before my time alive passes.

- Lec
 
The idea of creating a new life form seems like it may be somewhat... controversial.

This part made me chuckle:

"But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."
Click to expand...

I hope he's right.
 
This doesn't need to happen. There would be far too much controversy and opposition for it to happen, ever.

Period.
 
Tymon said:
This doesn't need to happen. There would be far too much controversy and opposition for it to happen, ever.

Period.
Click to expand...

Very true. Also, I think it's farther away that actually the article predicts. They are definitely jumping the gun, by more than you'd probably think.
 
i dont buy it.

if this is integrated with humans the part about controlling our cells and allowing them to remove old ones and keep strong

when are we suppossed to die(assuming it works?)

highly doubt that it will considering our history of mishaps
 
I dont understand why there has to be opposition against creating artificial life if it doesnt hurt anyone.
Even if it does get opposed and whatnot, that wont stop a few scientists from experimenting in private labs.
 
I was hoping this was gonna be about a multicellular organism D: Poo.
I thought they've already been creating single-celled organisms for years o.o; I'm sure we've had the technology for ages, right?

Hey, why do they want it to be able to mutate/evolve? Then they can't control it...."Hey look! It's fatal bacteria now! Let's kill it with this thingy....oh crap, it gained resistance!"
I've only taken a year of HS biology though >.> so srsly what do I know.
 
To be fair, this isn't "true" artificial life in the sense that they're creating it from the basic elements ... they're basically taking known combinations of DNA, that form known sequences of proteins, and using that knowledge to generate a cell ... a species ... that didn't used to exist.

It's a little like analyzing snippets of code from hundreds of programs, and trying to type those pieces of code yourself into a compiler to create an entirely different program.

I'd also like to dissuade anyone of their fears ... there's little-to-no danger in this sort of biotechnology ... at least, nothing beyond what we can already do (i.e., engineering new diseases/biopoisons).

This sort of thing would be done so we can create something that will eat cholesterol out of arteries, or reabsorb carbon out of our atmosphere. It would take the artificial life billions of years ... the same as our own ancestors ... to "evolve" to a point of being any sort of threat.
 
chpal said:
I dont understand why there has to be opposition against creating artificial life if it doesnt hurt anyone.
Even if it does get opposed and whatnot, that wont stop a few scientists from experimenting in private labs.
Click to expand...

I dunno, man. Frankenstein was created, and he hurt people.
 
Pasquale said:
I dunno, man. Frankenstein was created, and he hurt people.
Click to expand...

But..but.. he was misunderstood! He really just wanted to dance and have cigars!
 
Morwenny said:
But..but.. he was misunderstood! He really just wanted to dance and have cigars!
Click to expand...

I guess what I was saying is this:

Artificial life can go one of two ways. It can be a horrible Frankenstein monster, bent on destruction, or it can be a Kelly LeBrock from Weird Science, and just want to have copious amounts of sex.

My fingers are crossed for the latter.
 
The Article said:
"But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."
Click to expand...

Doesn't that quote logically necessitate that it CAN happen in our imagination?


Anyway, we're not near Frankenstein level; the real problem would be if they create a virus that we can't control because its evolution is totally separated from the history that gave us our immune systems.
 
They should fix the old lifeforms before they try to create new ones.

Anyway its just single cell organisms. That's the basic form of life and it took millions of years to become multicelluar organisms. Peoples paranoia and fear stem from ignorance on the subject.
 
Valoran said:
Anyway, we're not near Frankenstein level; the real problem would be if they create a virus that we can't control because its evolution is totally separated from the history that gave us our immune systems.
Click to expand...

Captain Trips!
 
Winklewil said:
To be fair, this isn't "true" artificial life in the sense that they're creating it from the basic elements ... they're basically taking known combinations of DNA, that form known sequences of proteins, and using that knowledge to generate a cell ... a species ... that didn't used to exist.

It's a little like analyzing snippets of code from hundreds of programs, and trying to type those pieces of code yourself into a compiler to create an entirely different program.

I'd also like to dissuade anyone of their fears ... there's little-to-no danger in this sort of biotechnology ... at least, nothing beyond what we can already do (i.e., engineering new diseases/biopoisons).

This sort of thing would be done so we can create something that will eat cholesterol out of arteries, or reabsorb carbon out of our atmosphere. It would take the artificial life billions of years ... the same as our own ancestors ... to "evolve" to a point of being any sort of threat.
Click to expand...

I'm not really scared since i'm sure it can't/won't happen on a much grander scale.

Look at our peak now, we can make people grow taller, healthier by altering cells pre-birth, but we cant control how potent the effect is.(there is something or some process term i'm thinking of but it escapes me)

Like starting fires with your hands and flint, but once it's created it can't be controlled.

Medicine and science have made us very strong but weak to another substance, ie depression drugs they help with depression(pending kind) but usually bring other symptoms to it albeit as strong as the current problem(depression in this case).

I really dont want the stuff in our bodies nature has always developed a way of controlling populus, first with bubonic plague, now AIDS,etc. Assuming that we can control these dieseases with this new ability, what will we face next?
 
/sigh

This is how the zombie epidemic begins. Get your shotguns and longswords ready folks. Remember, if you get turned into a zombie, redneck brains are the most delicious.
 
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