WASHINGTON - Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.
Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."
"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."
That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.
"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."
And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.
Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:
• A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.
• A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.
• A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.
One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.
Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.
His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.
"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.
In Gainesville, Fla., Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.
Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.
"When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."
Allah almighty is the creater; those scientist will never succeed. May Allah swt guide them to Islam.
Last edited by Hashim_507; 08-20-2007 at 07:58 AM.
True knowledge is not mention in relation to how much you memorise and then nerrate, but rather, true knowledge is an expression of piety ( Protecting oneself from what Allah(awj) prohibited and acting upon what he mandated.)
I don't have much time for blah today.. but what have the scientists done in a few decade, that God accomplished in billions of years? perhaps an elabortation is in order...
do we still live with the following list of inborn errors of metabolism?
Alpha Mannosidosis
Beta Mannosidosis
Aspartyglucosaminuria
Fucosidosis
Galactosialidosis
Mucolipidosis II
Mucolipidosis III
Schindler Disease
Sialidosis
Muscle phosphofructokinase deficiency
Tarui disease
Glycogen storage disease type 7
GSD VII
congenital sucrose isomaltose malabsorption
fucosidosis
galactosemia
glycogen storage disease
hereditary fructose intolerance
hereditary hyperglycemic obesity
mannosidosis
primary hyperoxaluria
*Some Rambling*
From your list of genetic disorders, Id say thats reason enough to discard the idea of God created life because as you ahve shown, its inherently imperfect.
As per your second point, perhaps if you read the article you would see the benifits. of course there's the other issue of knowledge itself being a good thing. if they manage to create life, then it would be a huge step for scientists as from there they could answer alot of questions regarding the first life-forms.
Last edited by Umu 'Isa; 08-23-2007 at 02:01 AM.
Reason: Beef will not be tolerated
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