"Immortal Molecule" Evolves — How Close To Synthetic Life?

An anonymous reader writes with word of ongoing work at Scripps Research Institute: "Can life arise from nothing but a chaotic assortment of basic molecules? The answer is a lot closer following a series of ingenious experiments that have shown evolution at work in non-living molecules."

Interesting route...

[eparker05]

Working with the ribosome seems like as good an idea as any, but the research seems so restricted. The nutrient rich medium does run out, but they are not selecting for long term viability, they are only selecting for speed of replication.

Problems that this does not address are: how did metabolisms develop, and where did membranes come from? It seems that a membrane bound replicating body of this sort would fit all the requirements of rudimentary life.

Re:what is a living molecule?

[headkase]

There is no "life", there is only cohesiveness over time. The magical attribute called "alive" does not actually exist anywhere in our Universe ;) We just don't happen to fall apart for a while while we compute.

Re:Interesting route...

[LowlyWorm]

Those problems may not be as great as they seem. DNA can be built from two corresponding RNA molecules. Once that stability is achieved, ribosomes [wikipedia.org] can "read" and "interpret" the proteins to build membranes, cell walls or more ribozymes and ribosomes (perhaps with some metabolic pathway changes).

Re:Interesting route...

[wizardforce]

Membranes self assemble. See micelles [wikipedia.org].

Re:what is a living molecule?

[carbuck]

organization.. response to stimuli... reproduction.. by this definition, most /. are not alive

Re:No

[Tablizer]

It can't be true since God didn't make it. Obviously :)

God did make it. It's just that to these new critters, God is a giant pink two-eyed thing in a long silly white coat.
   

Re:Computational Beauty of Nature

[headkase]

I just love playing with Christians with Figure 1 ;) You should see how livid one I was interacting with became! Yeah, I'm going to hell.

Non-working cats

[TapeCutter]

"Recognition that the Universe, Biology, and Evolution are all Computational is just taking time to work it's way through the teaching material."

Thanks for the reading tip. Like many other people trained in computer science I also belive that combined with Darwinian ideas it will radically change our understanding of biology and ultimately ourselves.

To paraphrase how Douglas Adams put it [youtube.com] for millenia science has been done by pulling things apart, but the first thing that happens when you pull a cat apart is you have a non-working cat, computers have given us the ability to do science by putting things together from the bottom up.

Despite what many people erroneously belive about computer models of things such as climate and the mammalian brain they have already demonstrated a level of sophistication that we could only dream of 30yrs ago.

BTW: My definition of life is; the process by which the universe achieves self awareness.

And they didn't have enough patience

[S3D]

They should have tried that for billion years, that would be more like real creation of life.

Re:Synthesized

[Monkey-Man2000]

You're misunderstanding the point because of the bad summary. They observed "spontaneous" evolution because the molecule has three qualities: it can self-replicate, it can pass down heritable information to offspring, and it can alter it's code (in some way that the article doeesn't describe). The descendents of the original synthesized molecules were much more tuned to their environment and out-compete "weaker" descendents of the original molecules.

So, really this just nicely shows the necessary conditions for very simple natural selection.

Re:what is a living molecule?

[khallow]

That's not a proper application of the composition fallacy. An applicable statement would be "If a cog can't keep time, then a watch can't keep time". If John Hasler (the original poster) claimed that "molecules aren't alive, hence anything made of molecules isn't alive", then he'd be committing the composition fallacy.

I see nothing wrong with the philosophical approach [slashdot.org] of headkase (another replier to your post) who merges properties of components and the whole. For example, a typical metal screw sinks in water. But a typical metal screw, used in a working boat, floats. It's a consistent viewpoint. I wouldn't typically employ it in my communications with others since it'd confuse most people to no end, but that's a pragmatic consideration based on maintaining my compatibility with common cultural protocols.