‘It’s Alive! It’s Alive!’ Maybe right here on Earth

www.kurzweilai.net...
www.nytimes.com...

From NYTimes:

But it could soon happen right here on Earth, according to a handful of chemists and biologists who are using the tools of modern genetics to try to generate the Frankensteinian spark that will jump the gap separating the inanimate and the animate. The day is coming, they say, when chemicals in a test tube will come to life.

from Kurzweilai:

...Dr. Joyce’s molecule is a form of RNA, assembling proteins in accordance with the blueprint encoded in DNA. Neither RNA nor DNA is alive by itself, any more than any other chemical. But in Dr. Joyce’s test tube, his specially engineered RNA molecule comes close, copying itself over and over, and evolving.

So far, he said, his work has shown that manmade molecules can evolve over successive generations. “They can pass information from parent to progeny, they can mutate,” Dr. Joyce said. “They can win or die.”

Two distinctly different approaches to the story; essentially tells us that the idea of creating life is neither dead nor in danger within our scientific communities.

For those mildly interested in the development, the idea is to use the mechanical and physical properties of molecules synthesized as RNA to reproduce into successively more successful life-forms. Several extreme scenarios could ultimately arise from these efforts; but if we are lucky, it may lead to new opportunities in technology bio-mechanical that might improve our world..... that is, of course, unless it becomes a plaything for revenue generation and opportunities to bilk people out of their wealth.

I do believe that the secret sections of the government probably already have this kind of thing perfected.

Still very interesting. Once it is in public domain i can see it taking us down a bad path though...

reply to post by Maxmars


S&F what a great find and really pretty amazing. Just think of the implications.
And imagine if you added that technology to this technology.



You could make anything and animate it and bring it to life. A live wrench?
Godzilla anyone?
Poses a whole new slew of ethical issues I might think.
How do you delete this stuff once you bring it to "life?"

Right to lifers would go mad.

reply to post by newcovenant


I can see where you are going with this...... you might like this article as well

"Molecular Mechanosynthesis Not Far Away in the Dreams of a Journalist and Star Trek Fan"
spectrum.ieee.org... an

DEAD LINK.... I guess they moved the article

I found interesting reading of The Animate and Inanimate by William Sidis. The young prodigy who's early essays we on the origins of life but later went into societal aspects of civilizations. Of course his theories are nearly a century ago but does make one wonder where the line can be drawn between the animate and inanimate. Discoveries of the last 80 or so years may make some of his base beliefs seem off but he's articulate to depart from conventional sciences using the logic he constructed as a kind of universal law. Also through perceptions of life and time he opens some light on what really can be determined animate to the perceptions of another animate entity in extreme radical, lets call it, metabolism. Do take a peek.

I have some thoughts on this. First of all , accepting that the people doing this work are geniuses in thier field , and worthy of respect for that, there do seem to be some logical gaps that need filling in here.

First of all , creating the RNA base of replication and mutation is grand and all, and a massive achievement of course. But it does not address the issue of time. Human kind , as an example, has been evolving for (one assumes) eons, from the primordial soup dwelling chains of chemicals, to aquatic life , to tree shrews ,then apes and finally mankind. This man made combination of chemicals in a tube have only existed for mere milliseconds in terms of species development. So even if the replicating , mutating mass inside that tube WERE capable of growing organs , and flesh, and so on, it might be an awful long time before that possibility is proven a reality.

Second , there is no way as far as I am aware (and I may be standing over an aching gap in my understanding here), to know how to tweak the chemical mixture to produce faster growth, without increasing the chances of random and unhelpful mutation. The only successful life form that mutates rapidly is bacteria, and assuming the aim of producing an intelligent lifeform of some description, introducing a biological hurry up will in all likelihood be unhelpful in the long term. Smarter organisms, those with limbs and organs and eyes and ears take thier time about selecting further changes to thier chemical make up, although that said, this may be because all those lifeforms have ALREADY done thier evolving.

What I am saying though, is that it would be insane if in a few short years, hell even a few decades, a lifeform could be grown from nothing but the soup of life, to full fleshly existance. It would be pure chance, because there is not the understanding in the world at this time to be able to make it happen cleanly and deliberately.

This is madness! Man was not meant to play Dog!