Chemists edge closer to recreating early life

[Savonarola]

Chemists edge closer to recreating early life

09 January 2009

A test tube based system of chemicals that exhibit life-like qualities such as indefinite self-replication, mutation, and survival of the fittest, has been created by US scientists. The researchers say their perpetually replicating RNA enzymes take us a step closer to understanding the origins of life on Earth, as well as to how life may one day be synthesised in the lab.

[snip]

Only the strongest will survive

The system also demonstrates natural selection. The team created twelve sets of cross-replicating enzymes ('left' and 'right' 1 to 12) and allowed them to compete for a common pool of oligonucleotide building blocks. Occasionally, a mutation would arise, so instead of making 'right 7', 'left 7' would instead combine oligonucleotides in a new way to make, for example, a 'right 7-left 12' hybrid. Such recombinants arose and then grew over many, many rounds of replication to dominate the population.

'This parallels what happens in biological systems, like natural selection or survival of the fittest,' says Joyce. 'It isn't alive, however, because what it doesn't have is the ability to invent novel functions out of whole cloth. If it could do that then most scientists would say that it crossed the line into life.'

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