DailyDirt: Not-So-Spontaneous Generation Of Life...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Aug 4th 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Abiogenesis is the study of how life can arise from non-living materials. So far, there have been very few examples of creating completely synthetic life forms, but plenty of people are working on it -- in hopes that we'll eventually learn about our own origins and/or the potential for extra-terrestrial life. Here are just a few interesting links on the topic of synthetic life.

The first man-made replicating species of a microbe has 100% synthetic DNA and cost about $40 million. Next stop on the dinosaur train: Jurassic Park! Keep your hands inside the car at all times... [url]
Creating DNA from scratch could be getting cheaper and cheaper soon. But it's not quite cheap enough yet to just start building fully synthetic lifeforms at random... [url]
Life may be getting harder to define -- it's not just replication and evolution. Or biologists need to include more things as living pretty soon... [url]
Some chemists created one of the first synthetic self-replicating molecules in the 1990s. These types of molecules could be the basis of life that isn't based on DNA and RNA. [url]
To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: abiogenesis, self-replicating molecules, synthetic life

8 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2011 @ 5:46pm

Life for the living
"Life may be getting harder to define -- it's not just replication and evolution. Or biologists need to include more things as living pretty soon..."

They should start with IP lawyers. You can't get anymore undead then that
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- Zot-Sindi, 4 Aug 2011 @ 7:03pm
  
  Re: Life for the living
  an/or politicians
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NullOp, 4 Aug 2011 @ 8:52pm

Life?
How 'bout used car dealers?
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- Zot-Sindi, 4 Aug 2011 @ 10:43pm
  
  Re: Life?
  them too
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  - Zot-Sindi, 4 Aug 2011 @ 10:43pm
    
    Re: Re: Life?
    clarification: in reference/addition to the first post
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Pixelation, 5 Aug 2011 @ 5:01am

"Next stop on the dinosaur train: Jurassic Park! Keep your hands inside the car at all times... "

Next they are going to create highly intelligent monkeys.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Aug 2011 @ 10:08am

Self-replicating anything...
... should be kept on a tight leash. "Hey, we just invented a new microbe that breaks down plastic! There's no way this can POSSIBLY be bad... hey, how come everyone's plastic is disintigrating after a week?"
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- Michael Ho (profile), 5 Aug 2011 @ 11:35am
  
  Re: Self-replicating anything...
  Thankfully, though, it seems that living things are generally highly-adapted for their specific environments -- so petroleum-eating microbes don't survive that well deep underground where most of the oil remains...
  
  not sure about plastic-eating microbes, but we should probably be more afraid of "green goo" than "grey goo"...
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