Morgan BellScientists create artificial self-replicating RNA!
January 14th 2009 11:47
In an important step towards creating artificial life, researchers have managed to create RNA that self-replicates, producing its own little ecosystem.
There are no cells, as Wired reports, but a set of 'hacked RNA' that self-replicate:
""So long as you provide the building blocks and the starter seed, it goes forever," said Gerald Joyce, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute and co-author of the paper published Thursday in Science. "It is immortalized molecular information."
Joyce's chemicals are technically hacked RNA enzymes, much like the ones we have in our bodies, but they don't behave anything like those in living creatures. But, these synthetic RNA replicators do provide a model for evolution — and shed light on one step in the development of early living systems from on a lifeless globe. "
Joyce's chemicals are technically hacked RNA enzymes, much like the ones we have in our bodies, but they don't behave anything like those in living creatures. But, these synthetic RNA replicators do provide a model for evolution — and shed light on one step in the development of early living systems from on a lifeless globe. "
In addition, once the replicators started going, they would occasionally suffer mutations - some would die out, but others would be more successful at replicating, thus coming to dominate the population.
After 77 generations, all the original replicators were gone - taken over by the new variants, stronger and mightier than before.
Whoa - if this isn't a compelling case for evolution! Right before our eyes!
There is a limitation, though... for the experiment to produce artificial life, not only does it need to reproduce, it needs to develop new functions, which these replicators seem unable to do...from New Scientist:
"More fundamentally, to mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team's RNA molecule. "It doesn't have open-ended capacity for Darwinian evolution.""
They're still taking a crack at it, though - the eventual creation of artificial life will be astounding, but potentially troubling. Is that something we want to create?
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