SCI/TECH: Scientists Attempt to Create New Organism

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Chen finishes his presentation, and Rasmussen leans forward. "If we can just make a system that’s able to replicate a few times," he says gravely, "we're going to change the world." It's the kind of boast few scientists would dare make aloud, especially when their grant check has only recently cleared. Several of the veterans in the room chuckle and shake their heads—there he goes again.

But Rasmussen's team isn’t the only one attempting to create new organisms. By some estimates, more than 100 labs are chipping away at the problem, including one headed by superstar biologist Craig Venter, whose innovative DNA-sequencing technology led to the decoding of the human genome four years ahead of schedule. Last April the European Union launched the $10-million Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution project, and when I visited Rasmussen in October, he had caught wind of a Japanese effort about to get under way. "There’s no doubt that this is going to happen," he says. "It's no longer a question of 'if,' but of who is going to do it and when."

Many of these scientists are trying to solve the oldest puzzle in science: How did we get here? What combination of inanimate molecules led, four billion years ago, to the first microscopic creature, and from there to the riot of diversity that is life on Earth? "One of the major questions [this work] could answer is, Was life an accident or inevitable?" says Peter Nielsen, a chemist at the University of Copenhagen who is collaborating with Rasmussen.



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