One step closer to abiogenesis and playing "god": Researchers create protocell in the lab.
Offline Essentially, researchers have created an artificially lipid cell way, placed DNA inside it, and watched it reproduce.
This is thought to be an essential step in the evolution of the cell. We've long known that lipids form cell like spheres in water due to their hydrophillic/phobic dual nature. What wasn't obvious is why or how such a protected bit of environment could serve as a nursery for self-replicating molecules like DNA, or how the material to replicate would get inside that membrane.
Now we've demonstrated exactly that.
Not only does this work have obvious implications in genetic and evolutionary biology fields, but it is a major step in our ability to understand and developed genetically engineered organisms.
Check it out:
http://www.geneticstimes.com/research/Researchers_Build_Model_Protocell_Capable_of_Copying_DNA.asp
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server.
- Login to post comments
Holy shit. I mean ... holy shit. That's a huge step. Thanks for the link!
Very cool!
As the DNA reproduced, but did not divide the membrane in two, I wonder if that indicates the first cells were host to a myriad of DNA strands, rather than the highly-regulated cells of modern biology.
Doesn't matter, I guess.
This is some of the coolest biology news in a log time.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Theists: Oh great, now we have to find another gap?
They're clever buggers.... I think we should find their gap for them. If we tell them which gap they ought to have, it'll give them a real dilemma. Since we're atheists, we must be wrong, so their gap wouldn't be acceptable... all we have to do is keep telling them their gap before they can think of it.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
OK, fine, the next gap would be the development of self-replicating molecules.
Oh, wait, we've done that too.....
MIT researchers create self-replicating molecules in the lab:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1990/may09/23124.html
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=782280
http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=72B0C4D9-21B2-40E2-B773-53299C4F299
So what's the next gap god is hiding in?
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server.
This kind of thing is exactly why it's my contention that we need some better apologetics. I almost feel like a bully in debates at this point.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
DUH! Somebody still had to use their cosmic superglue to create bonding processes in the first place. Guess who that someone was?
I'll give you a hint:
It starts with a 'G'.
[/creationist]
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940