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Assembling Living Things From Nonliving: What is the Status?

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  • #1

    Assembling Living Things From Nonliving: What is the Status?

    I remember being taught in highschool that it wasn't (yet) possible to take the building blocks of a cell and create a living cell.

    A few years have passed and I am wondering if any progress has been made in that direction.

    I think we have had microscopes that let us see down to the atom for quite some time now, and I think that it shouldn't be too hard to catalogue the molecular contents of, say, an amoeba?

    What is blocking our progress here? Do we fail to glue stuff together or does the stuff refuse to move once glued together?
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  • #2
    Making a protein from scratch (as opposed to using a living cell to do so) is still well out of range, AFAIK.

    Just putting together a combination of atoms to make a protein does not, unfortunately, make a functional protein; there are many folds and secondary bonds that affect how it functions, and how those form and in what order is very important.

    Folding the protein appropriately is probably out of range until we develop more competent 'nanotechnology' (or in more correct terms, until we develop the capability to work more closely on the molecular level), in addition to having a better understanding of how protein folding works and affects functionality.
    <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
    I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

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    • #3
      Thanks.

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      • #4
        We're working on it. But even simple organisms are horrifically complex.
        Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
        -Richard Dawkins

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        • #5
          I ate a dead chicken and helped create a baby girl. So it's definitely possible.
          I'm consitently stupid- Japher
          I think that opinion in the United States is decidedly different from the rest of the world because we have a free press -- by free, I mean a virgorously presented right wing point of view on the air and available to all.- Ned

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Theben
            I ate a dead chicken and helped create a baby girl. So it's definitely possible.
            Strange... Creating babies is usually preceeded by drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

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            • #7
              That was afterwards.
              I'm consitently stupid- Japher
              I think that opinion in the United States is decidedly different from the rest of the world because we have a free press -- by free, I mean a virgorously presented right wing point of view on the air and available to all.- Ned

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              • #8
                I think the more interesting question will be when we are able to synthesize proteins, rather than actually create cells, in any event. I can't count the number of times my GF has complained about some problem her experiments were having (she's an immunologist) and I've suggested 'isn't there a protein that does blah' and she said no ... many things would be solved if she could make proteins instead of having to work with what nature gave her
                <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
                I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

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                • #9
                  Perhaps cataloging all the existing proteins would be usefull?


                  Anyway why not have large vats of GE bacteria throw out randome proteins? I mean a few of them are bound to do interesting things?
                  Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
                  The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
                  The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez Dávila

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                  • #10
                    I think they've got that in the works Some examples/resources are listed on wiki, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_family
                    <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
                    I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by snoopy369
                      I think they've got that in the works
                      How many different kinds of proteins are there?
                      Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
                      The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
                      The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez Dávila

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Heraclitus
                        Perhaps cataloging all the existing proteins would be usefull?


                        Anyway why not have large vats of GE bacteria throw out randome proteins? I mean a few of them are bound to do interesting things?
                        I think the numbers involved are rather unmanageable Take a 1 and then put as many zeroes as you can type after it ... there are probably more possible proteins when you consider the different folds and secondary structures, than the number you type.

                        (And no, don't post that on apolyton please.)
                        <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
                        I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

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                        • #13
                          Well, what would be really useful is a database of protein domains, with function and gene sequence, so you could then just assemble the gene like lego blocks, synthesise that and grow it up in a bacterial culture.
                          Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
                          -Richard Dawkins

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by snoopy369

                            (And no, don't post that on apolyton please.)
                            What?
                            Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
                            The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
                            The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez Dávila

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Heraclitus


                              What?
                              The staggeringly huge number of random proteins
                              Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
                              -Richard Dawkins

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