Artificial Life May Be Possible Within Ten Years

CapedOpossum writes "According to an article from a few weeks back on CNN, researchers in the field of genetics and biology think that we may be able to artificially create life within the next decade. From the article: '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. 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.'"

legitimate worries

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could run amok

I, for one, welcome our new artificially-created overlords!

Amok, amok, amok!

Re:legitimate worries

[bagboy (630125)]

>>creating life that could run amok

shouldn't that be amarok?

Re:

[Cpt_Kirks (37296)]

shouldn't that be amarok?

Or maybe "Ragnarök"...

Replace my Mitochondria!

[StCredZero (169093)]

If we can make new ones that can replace the ones that are already there with broken-down mtDNA, then this brings us closer to extended lifespans!

http://methuselahfoundation.org/index.php?pagename =mitosens [methuselahfoundation.org]

Existing technology is better

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

I personally prefer the existing technology used to create life.

Re:

[hotkey (969493)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culturally_significan t_phrases_from_The_Simpsons#Our_new_.E2.80.A6_Over lords [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Blublu (647618)]

It was funny once, maybe twice. Then it stopped being funny for a while, then it became funny again. Then it stopped being funny again. Truth is, no one knows whether of not it's funny anymore.

So...

[rrohbeck (944847)]

we're going to *grow* flying cars?

Re:

[peragrin (659227)]

well birds already know how to life so it will just be pointing them in the right direction and keeping them fed. on the plus side they will lower CO2 emmissions quite a bit, and food is easier to get than gas, at least today. I just hope they don't bring back a carnivore flying animal.

Re:

[ch-chuck (9622)]

I just hope they don't bring back a carnivore flying animal.

Gryphons would be a lot of fun.

Re:So...

[dgatwood (11270)]

Suddenly seeing a Sci-Fi commercial for Eureka. Something along the lines of "Remember, if you're creating a new pet, don't make it a carnivore. When adding a new member to the family, you shouldn't risk the old ones."

Live smart, Slashdot.

Good News for Slashdotters

[fm6 (162816)]

Since artificial life is the only kind they're every going to get!

Re:

[eln (21727)]

"Lonely? Just boot up a Booty-Tron for only $99.95 a month!"

I think I speak for all Slashdotters when I say this is what I've been waiting my whole life (or at least since age 13) for.

Seriously

[Anonymous Crowhead (577505)]

How hard could it be to create ugly bags of mostly water?

Re:Seriously

[by Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not too hard; you only took 9 months of development.

Re:Seriously

[jollyreaper (513215)]

Apparently not too hard; you only took 9 months of development.

And was brought onto the market underdeveloped and incapable of self-support, puking and shitting on the people taking care of him, keeping them up at night. Wow, by this standard, Microsoft Vista must be alive!

Re:Seriously

[asolipsist (106599)]

Apparently not too hard; you only took 9 months of development.

That's only 9 months of manufacturing, it took over a billion years of R&D to flesh out the design.

Re:

[esme (17526)]

...and nearly twelve billion years to setup the runtime environment.

Re:

[Plutonite (999141)]

That's only 9 months of manufacturing, it took over a billion years of R&D to flesh out the design.

Is this supposed to make me feel less or more confident in seeing Duke Nukem Forever in my lifetime?

Re:Seriously

[misanthrope101 (253915)]

Evolutionary theory doesn't say that humans "just randomly formed." Creationist caricatures of Darwinism bear little resemblance to actual evolutionary theory.

That's part of the reason it's so hard to have a debate on the subject. It's difficult to even get to the subject, because you have to wade through so many absurd assumptions about what evolution is (meaning--what the scientific theory is) before you can argue about whether it's right or wrong. Usually we never get to that point, because people don't want to give up their cherished illusions that Darwinism is best summed up by stuff like "Frog+time=prince."

It would be like me arguing against voting Republican because they eat babies. They don't eat babies, but if I couldn't give up that caricature, we could never get to the point of talking about their actual platform or policies.

Life imitates Sid Meier

[Tackhead (54550)]

"We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?"
- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang (The Human Hive), Dynamics of Mind

Woo Hoo!

[n6kuy (172098)]

Artificial Intelligent Design!

Re:Woo Hoo!

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

It should be an interesting test. If the ID crowd are sincere in their claim that the Desginer doesn't have to be divine, they'll be delighted. If, on the other hand, they're really just a bunch of religious fanatics, they'll be appalled. (I know which way I'm betting.)

I'm on lunch break, as you can tell.

[ChrisMounce (1096567)]

So, when will we start seeing legislation for warnings on food? If this takes off, I can see companies making stuff like pseudo-cows and pseudo-chickens that are cheaper to breed in the long term.

I suppose they'll start out with plant-like forms of life for simplicity. Strangely, eating artificial plants wouldn't bother me as much as artificial animals.

Re:

[Farmer Tim (530755)]

If this takes off, I can see companies making stuff like pseudo-cows and pseudo-chickens that are cheaper to breed in the long term.

I suspect we're there already: if a McNugget isn't pseudo-chicken, what exactly is it?

Strangely, eating artificial plants wouldn't bother me as much as artificial animals.

Blurring the line would be interesting. I'm looking forward to growing a steak vine.

We have 2 billion years

[Colin Smith (2679)]

Of killing & eating each other. That's life on earth.

Any artificial life without that pedigree is going to be ... disadvantaged.

 

Re:

[Paulrothrock (685079)]

Any artificial life without that pedigree is going to be ... disadvantaged.

I think you mean "breakfast."

Don't worry

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

It still won't suck as much as real life.

Uh.

[Wilson_6500 (896824)]

"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.

Between that and the guy who wants to extend the genetic code to twelve bases, it seems a little avant-garde to just trust everything to evolution (although, in a sense, I suppose that's the point of being a forerunner). It seems that would be more useful to trust evolution for advancement only in the intermediate phases of getting organisms that do what we want, rather than letting them evolve and evolve until we have the final designs for proto-organisms that do what we want. Upon reflection, I don't really expect them to try the latter method since it would lead to all kinds of dead ends, but I do sorta wonder how many other people out there will jump to that conclusion like I did. Of course, dead ends in genetics maybe don't matter if you're breeding billions of proto-organisms and have a reliable method for killing the ones you know you don't want. Then again, unless you remove the ability of the organisms to breed (which, if we're designing them from scratch, may not be too hard), evolution will just continue on even after you have what you think is your final design.

I guess all this thinking is a little preliminary. People will begin to take these issues perhaps a little more seriously when the time comes to start breeding little proto-organisms.

Re:Uh.

[Dachannien (617929)]

You don't need a reliable method of killing off the ones you don't want. All you need is a little bit of selection pressure. In fact, too much pressure can be detrimental to evolution, as it can strip the population of diversity. A good method would probably be to vary the strength of selection pressures over time, to allow the population to diverge and then occasionally cull the low performers.

Self destruction

[Reality Master 101 (179095)]

One of the answers to the Fermi Paradox [wikipedia.org] that is often thrown around is the idea that intelligent life tends to destroy itself after a short amount of time. Normally, people think this means huge wars, but I actually have pondered a different theory. As technology advances, more and more power is put into the hands of relatively small groups, and then ultimately to individuals.

I've wondered if perhaps there was some sort of energy-conversion technology that we don't know about yet (such as an easy way to create antimatter), but once discovered, it puts too much power available too easily. Basically, a single nutcase then creates a doomsday bomb, and that's it. If that were possible, and assuming it was relatively undetectable, it would be inevitable that life would be destroyed. You simply can't stop determined crazy people.

On the other hand, things like this make me wonder about biological weapons. As this technology matures, it will get easier and easier, and be available cheaper and cheaper to create artificial lifeforms. You see it on the Internet... script kiddies have an immense amount of power to destroy property. Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?

It won't be war that kills everyone, it'll be the lone Unibomber type.

Re:Self destruction

[Tackhead (54550)]

> On the other hand, things like this make me wonder about biological weapons. As this technology matures, it will get easier and easier, and be available cheaper and cheaper to create artificial lifeforms. You see it on the Internet... script kiddies have an immense amount of power to destroy property. Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?
>
> It won't be war that kills everyone, it'll be the lone Unibomber type.

Greg Egan's The Moral Virologist [eidolon.net] indirectly addresses your point, and is one of the most fascinating short stories you'll ever read.

Re:

[Kjella (173770)]

Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?

Biolife and bioweapons is sorta like saying "I got a cow, now how do I make a bioweapon out of it". If you were the serious nutty kind, go into hazardous disease research until you get your hands on a nasty strain of ebola, mix it up with some airborn virus (this is not extremely hard, and doesn't require artifical life it's more like a transplant), produce a decent quantity then show up early

Re:

[Xonstantine (947614)]

In short, those sane enough to be capable aren't insane enough to actually want to kill *everyone*.

Not really. Sanity is relative and evolving cultural standard, after all.

All you really need is a motivated, talented, sociopathic personality that believes a doomsday device is to his or her benefit or furthers his goals.

Artificial Life May Be Possible Within Ten Years

[zeromorph (1009305)]

[...] we may be able to artificially create life within the next decade. [...], and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

Let me venture a guess... 10 years?

Re:Artificial Life May Be Possible Within Ten Year

[argmanah (616458)]

[...] we may be able to artificially create life within the next decade. [...], and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

Let me venture a guess... 10 years?

It must be a bunch of Unix developers trying to avoid having to deal with the 2038 overflow problem. Us geeks will do just about anything to slack.

yeah, yeah...

[zeromorph (1009305)]

46 chromosomes ought to be enough for anybody.

reminds me of my fav. joke.....

[Taimat (944976)]

Humans have become so technically evolved that they can now make a living, breathing person.

A summit of scientists believed that because they now had the power to create life, God was no longer needed. So they all decided that someone should go and tell God this. One man volunteered to go. One day he climbed a mountain and called upon God.

"God! We humans now have the ability to bring people from the dead, we can create our own life, we don't need you anymore so you can leave us alone."

God listened to the scientist and nodded his head. "Okay, I'll tell you what, if you can really create life, let's have a competition, if you can create a better person than me, I'll go, but we'll have to do it the way I did it in the old days."

So the scientist agrees and begins to collect some dirt to make his person. God simply watches him and finally asks him what he's doing.

"I'm using the dirt to make a person."

God smiles, looks at the scientist and replies, "Go make your own dirt."

Artificial woman

[javamann (410973)]

So, if I created an artificial woman I'm betting she still wouldn't go out with me.

Why create from scratch?

[Nymz (905908)]

I find it's easier to take an existing program, and alter it a bit here and there, than to start writting completly from scratch. If they are successful though, I'm willing to bet they won't be in a 'sharing' mood. (more likely a 'patent' mood)

Great

[eclectro (227083)]

I will send my robotic man servant to take the flying car and pick up my new pet blob.

Never heard of sea monkeys?

[Lucas123 (935744)]

They came as little artificial pellets, but once you put them in water -- look out -- LIFE!

Will spawn a new generation of Sci-Fi Horror Flix

[Kazoo the Clown (644526)]

With every new scientific enhancement comes the man-made horrors that Hollywood is more than willing to capitalize upon...

Evaluate the claims by looking at the company

[wintermute42 (710554)]

I've been to Venice, Italy once for six days. I still dream of going back. Venice is one of the great jewels of humanity, a place like no other. Assuming that the Italian government and regulations didn't drive me crazy, I'd love to love in Venice.

This train of through seems to have been the logic behind ProtoLife. The company has been founded and run by a group of Americans without any particular experience in molecular biology or any other kind of biology. The closest they seem to get is an organic chemist. The whole motivo esistere (reason to exist) seems to be "lets do something that sounds cool in the coolest city in the world". Given their backgrounds, I think that there are serious questions about whether some of the people involved have any real understanding of experimental method (and instrumenting a roulette wheel doesn't count), much less the "wet lab" work of biology.

In short, this is not a serious company and they don't deserve to have any claims they make taken seriously. If artificial life is created in ten years it seems very unlikely that this will have been done at ProtoLife.

In theory this is a start-up company that is supposed to have some prospect of making money. Artificial life, which really amounts to assembling pieces (enzymes and organelles from cells, along with selected genes). This doesn't mean that the assembled organism is of any use from a commercial stand point. This just reinforced the idea that this company is nothing more than a hobby.

In other news...

[JFMulder (59706)]

Artificial life impossible for the next 9 years.

Re:

[SpaceLifeForm (228190)]

That's cloning. This is LFS (Life From Scratch),
not to be confused with Linux From Scratch.

Re:

[im_thatoneguy (819432)]

They're attempting to manufacture a cell.

Cloning is nothing more than tricking a cell to do what it's already designed to do. You aren't creating anything, the cell is creating another cell.

It's the difference between going to a Frys buying a motherboard, processor, case etc and assembling it at home vs mining ore, refining, designing, building a fabrication unit printing circuits and assembling that.

Re:It's Alive!

[Dogtanian (588974)]

Next thing we know, our streets are filled with wandering empty shells with no knowledge of "right" and "wrong".

They already are. Duh.

Re:It's Alive!

[wizardforce (1005805)]

I shudder to think that an already overcrowded planet has to make more room for "fake babies".

notice that problem wasn't caused by the creation of artificial life, it is a sad consequence of ancient cultures not adapting to technology that increases the human life span. many cultures adapted to the unfortunate fact that to keep populations stable one might need to have twice as many kids as there were parents. once technology eliminated alot of childhood diseases the birthrates that sustained humanity before now caused an unsustainable boom in population growth.

the potential for anarchy is more than a slight worry for me, being that even if you could replicate the inner-workings of life, it doesn't mean you can give it a "soul".

I hear that argument a lot, that just because we could understand the entirety of human biology that we somehow wouldn't understand what makes us human, usually the view is that something supernatural governs the soul; although that fails to take into account environmental factors- tumors and brain damage for example can permanently alter personality, there are cases for example like phineas gage where permanent alterations in who he was occured. the man was never the same after that accident, you could say his soul was never the same. damage to the amygdala can cause alterations to emotional states, drugs can permanently alter emotional states as well.

our streets are filled with wandering empty shells with no knowledge of "right" and "wrong". Just because science "can do it" doesn't always mean it "should do it".

interesting you mention that, another view commonly held that our society is "degrading" from the "good old days" when most peopel don't realize how violent and utterly appalling most of human history was. what exactly do you think we are degrading from? we dont burn people at the stake like was a common punishment in the past, we dont stone people to death [in most countries] we dont enslave entire swaths of people on the basis of how much melanin was in their skin or destroy entire civilizations [mayan aztec] with diseases and war; Cortez for example is responsible in part for a civilization of 25 million being wiped out in south america. If anything society is getting less violent and more civilized as technology advances. I think that people should really start thinking for themselves what makes us human and do some research on human history so that we do not reverty back to such violence.

Re:It's Alive!

[Joe Tie. (567096)]

People said, to the word, the exact same thing about babies born from IVF therapy. Do you think they're soulless automatons too? Should we, perhaps, go kill them all for the greater good of our super-moral "normals"? Don't you see just a bit of irony in your denial to give something a chance at life, partially from revulsion over it being different, in terms of reasoning from your own position of moral superiority?