It's ALIVE!

There's a long but interesting article in NewScientist about efforts underway to create artificial life. You can read the first part here and the second part here. I'll wait.

What I find interesting is how utterly dependent on existing biology this all is. They're creating "artificial life" by combining components derived ultimately from living things. It's like building a homemade clock by taking apart a bunch of clocks you got at the store and using parts from them.

I'd like to see a totally new approach based on pure chemistry and nanotechnology. Design from first principles -- pick some suitable long-chain molecule as an information-storing analog to DNA. Why a chain, even? Why not some carbon compound that forms large sheets so you can have whole "pages" of genetic information? Find ways to extract and store energy at the molecular level to power this artificial life. Maybe think "outside the box" about features of natural life: does your artificial life form have to be an enclosed cell? Does it need water as a solvent?

Such a project would be more than just cool. (It would, of course, be VERY cool.) By trying to create a living or quasi-living system without using the existing terrestrial-life toolbox, it would teach us a lot about what features of our own biology are necessary, as opposed to those which are historical accidents.

Anyone out there have a university-class chemistry lab, a dedicated corps of researchers, and a couple of billion dollars to throw at the project?

Comments

[Barrett]

the endgame of all this is ice-9, you know.