Scientists attempt to replicate life

A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life, moving a step closer to attempts to create life. Sourya Biswas reports

Modern science has helped man build many things, but one creation still remains elusive to his hands -- the magic of creating life. But not for long, if latest scientific reports are to be believed. A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life, moving a step closer to attempts to create life.

Of course, life in this case does not refer to a prancing, breathing organism, but rather a simple, single-celled organism that's capable of evolving and reproducing itself. Considering that evolution and reproduction are two of the characteristic features of any life form, these efforts, if successful, may be considered to have reached that remarkable milestone.

A team led by Jack Szostak, an artificial life investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has taken several important steps towards realising that magic moment. In June, Szostak announced that his laboratory had constructed a model "protocell," a synthetic membrane enclosing a copy of an existing strand of genetic material. His team now is trying to synthesize the other half of the puzzle: some form of artificial DNA.

Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.

While his latest work remains unpublished, Szostak described preliminary new success in getting protocells with genetic information inside them to replicate at the XV International Conference on the Origin of Life in Florence, Italy, last week. The replication isn't wholly autonomous, so it's not quite artificial life yet, but it is as close as anyone has ever come to turning chemicals into biological organisms.

Although Szostak claims to have made considerable progress in copying limited gene sequences, he is quite candid about the present limitations of his work in copying arbitrary gene sequences. However, he is also optimistic that a synthetic cell will be created within a decade.