In a laboratory in San Diego, a team of chemists and biologists are trying to create life in a test tube filled with liquid. Scientists don’t all agree on what the definition of life is, but they DO agree that it must have the ability to evolve and adapt. This gives us an idea of how to recognize life if should find it on another planet.
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Astrobiologist Richard B. Hoover has discovered evidence of microfossils that resemble bacteria in fresh (so they couldn’t have become contaminated later) slices of the interior surfaces of 3 carbon-filled meteorites. After looking at them under an electron microscope, he has determined that they resemble bacteria found on Earth. His conclusion? These are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in these meteors, which are rocks that impacted Earth from space. The incredible implication of this discovery is that life is EVERYWHERE, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets.read more
We can create it, but can we patent it? – It’s big news: Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell. Will the next step be building a human Frankenstein?
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Genetically-modified foods and cloning started the ball rolling and there’s no stopping it now: artificial life is on the way.
In the December 17th edition of the Washington Post, Rick Weiss reports that “researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.” According to Weiss, this ability will force a “rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive.” He quotes anthropologist Paul Rabinow as saying, “This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be.”
Weiss quotes M.I.T. researcher Drew Endy as saying, “We’re heading into an era where people will be writing DNA programs like the early days of computer programming, but who will own these programs?”
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