Creating life from scratch

The folks at Los Alamos are working on creating life from scratch in a project called the Los Alamos Bug. This project is very interesting because people have been trying to do it for so long. Though I when you read the paper it sounds like all the things we've been hearing about nano tech. Which makes complete sense... though I don't know that the requirement for Darwinian evolution is nessicary in a pure nano tech project. This is very exciting stuff.
The Los Alamos Bug | PACE REPORT | John McCaskill

It is amazing to me that we are finally getting to a day when we can engineer at the molecular level! Systems that can generate DNA on demand, self replicating, and self organizing.... a wonderful time to be alive.

ScienceDaily: Physicists Discover Inorganic Dust With Lifelike Qualities

The idea of synthetic DNA is very appealing. Wheres the open code! I want a synthesis machine. Creation of synthetic or artificial life at home.
BBC News - 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
Artificial cells: conception and simulation | PACE REPORT | John McCaskill - PACE has integrated the conception, modeling and simulation of artificial chemical cells and their subsystems as complex information systems.

Xenobiology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia the Synthetic biology kind.

xeno-nucleic acids

XNA: A New Genetic Language - They engineered XNA-compatible polymerases, which could create a strand of XNA using a DNA template. The most successful polymerase was able to make an HNA chain long enough to encode meaningful information, like the gene for tRNA synthesis. The group also successfully engineered reverse transcriptases (RTs), which do the opposite of an XNA polymerase — that is, make a strand of DNA from an XNA template (1). Thus, the information encoded in DNA can now be converted to an XNA and vice versa.
Artificial DNA: PNA & XNA
Synthetic DNA Created, Evolves on Its Own
XNA, Synthetic DNA, Could Lead To New Life Forms, Scientists Say
Synthetic XNA molecules can evolve and store genetic information, just like DNA : Not Exactly Rocket Science

Created: 2005-10-24 08:59:56 Modified: 2013-09-18 23:17:10