Während alle über Spore reden...

Derweil, in der nicht-virtuellen Realität, ist die Gruppe um Szostak, über die ich hier schon einmal berichtet habe, anscheinend einen weiteren Schritt näher an die Herstellung künstlichen Lebens gerückt:

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While his latest work remains unpublished, Szostak described preliminary new success in getting protocells with genetic information inside them to replicate at the XV International Conference on the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.

"We've made more progress on how the membrane of a protocell could grow and divide," Szostak said in a phone interview. "What we can do now is copy a limited set of simple [genetic] sequences, but we need to be able to copy arbitrary sequences so that sequences could evolve that do something useful."

[Quelle: RichardDawkins.net, Wired]

Auf den nächsten Artikel dieser Gruppe kann man gespannt sein.

Und noch viel mehr bin ich darauf gespannt, was man in 10 oder 20 Jahren zu künstlichem Leben schreiben wird! Artificial protocell evolved ..?.. in long term evolution experiment wäre eine Schlagzeile, die ich gerne einmal lesen würde.

MfG,
JLT