DailyDirt: Not-So-Spontaneous Generation Of Life…
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
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.
Filed Under: abiogenesis, self-replicating molecules, synthetic life
Comments on “DailyDirt: Not-So-Spontaneous Generation Of Life…”
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
Re: Life for the living
an/or politicians
Life?
How ’bout used car dealers?
Re: Life?
them too
Re: Re: Life?
clarification: in reference/addition to the first post
“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.
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?”
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”…