h a l f b a k e r yA few slices short of a loaf.
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...then reverse them presumably creating life.
Obviously you can turn life into dead matter in any
number
of ways, but studying how to move backwards from live
and animate to dead and inanimate in incredibly minute
steps could perhaps provide some insight into how the
reverse process, life
from inanimate matter occurred.
These steps would be forces of heat, light, cycles of
various chemical interactions basically all the forces that
were on prelife Earth.
Break the organism into its complex
molecules then reverse the process. Kill it and bring it
back to life. The idea would be to just cross the line into
death in such a way that it's reversible. By finding the
manner of killing the organism that's reversible, perhaps
this is the means by which the organic molecules became
alive. Once this is determined, take a bunch of the
molecules that have never been a part of a living
organism, apply this process to them and make synthetic
life.
Artificial cell
https://en.m.wikipe...iki/Artificial_cell
[theircompetitor, Jun 15 2016]
Miller–Urey experiment
https://en.wikipedi...0%93Urey_experiment
[Skewed, Jun 15 2016]
The Blob
https://www.youtube...watch?v=ZszGKvv6xJg
Same motivations here [bungston, Jun 15 2016]
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Well, at least it's not in Oth... oh, wait.... |
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Baked. The french are, unfortunately, Widely Known To Exist... |
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We encourage the idea of breaking them down into inanimate components - it's the reassembly part we dislike the idea of. |
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//By finding the manner of killing the organism
that's reversible, perhaps this is the means by
which the organic molecules became alive.// This
implies that you're looking for some sort of vis
viva. |
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//take a bunch of the molecules that have never
been a part of a living organism, apply this process
to them and make synthetic life.// Being done.
The closest so far is Craig <spit> Venter's project,
which was to make a synthetic genome and put it
into an enucleated ("dead") cell and make it live.
But that's cheating. |
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One of my buddies (Phil Holliger - google him) is
working on creating self-replicating RNA molecules
which will be extremely minimal life when it
works. |
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//One of my buddies (Phil Holliger - google him) is
working on creating self-replicating RNA molecules
which will be extremely minimal life when it
works.// |
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Jesus Christ Max, what the hell are you doing
hanging out with us dummies? |
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Could you do me a favor, just for laughs tell him
my idea and if he still wants to be friends with you
let me know what he said? I think there might be
something to this. |
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Pose it as a joke, like "You know that website full
of dummies I go to for laughs? Get a load of what
this one idiot said..." |
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To simplify, it's about making a map between living
cell and the non living pre-cursor molecules that
make up that cell by breaking down the cell with
various methods, then observing how the
transformation takes place to gain insight into how
the opposite happens, that is, how those molecules
turned into cells. In other words turn cells into un-
linked molecules to see how un-linked molecules
might turn into cells. |
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Or is that totally stupid? |
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Both yeast and paint have a pleasant smell, are significantly useful in their own specialised way, and can be transported without particular difficulty. Thy can also be dessicated to a convenient, durable form without arousing comment. |
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None of the above are true of the french. |
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// Or is that totally stupid? // |
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You can be sure that if [Max] answers you, the answer will be definitive. Be afraid, be very afraid.... |
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// Jesus Christ Max, what the hell are you doing hanging out with us dummies? // |
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Same as us - it can be amusing to watch small, naïve creatures interacting. |
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// These steps would be forces of heat, light, cycles of various chemical interactions basically all the forces that were on prelife Earth. // |
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// take a bunch of the molecules that have never been a part of a living organism, apply this process to them and make synthetic life. // |
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you're describing the Miller–Urey experiment (1952), it's pretty basic common knowledge, or so I thought.. honestly, do they not teach this stuff in basic secondary school pre-option (age 11-12) science classes any more? |
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Not the school [doc] went to, obviously. |
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Or maybe they did, but he was (as usual) round the back of the bike sheds, smoking and swigging cheap cider. |
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//you're describing the Miller–Urey
experiment (1952), it's pretty basic common
knowledge, or so I thought.. honestly, do they not
teach this stuff in basic secondary school pre-
option (age 11-12)//
science classes any more?
Well, aren't we the charmer. |
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Well if I'm so stupid for having not been taught this
in
school, do I get partial credit for having come up
with it on my own? |
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I think you meant to insult me and very
accidentally
paid me a pretty big compliment. |
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//Or maybe they did, but he was (as usual) round
the back of the bike sheds, smoking and swigging
cheap cider.// |
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Interesting how this went from 0 to nasty in such
short order. |
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nope didn't mean to insult you doc - expressing frustration at education system - if you came up with this idea sans any prior knowledge through education or subconscious prompting of a half remembered TV science show then kudos are clearly due |
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You're talking about THAT experiment? Yes, I'm well
aware of that and I did read about it on my own as
well as being told about it in school. |
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This is quite different unless they did something
beyond recreating basic elements of life with
simulated pre-life Earth conditions. |
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In which case, I am ignorant of the full extent of
the experiment, but I don't believe that's the case. |
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This is going the other direction, from life back
into inert matter in very, very small increments. |
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Yes, as [doctorremulac3] said, this isn't just Miller-Urey. |
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Miller-Urey only creates basic amino acids |
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more recent experiments constructing artificial cells gives you the last step |
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but those mostly use material from natural cells rather than building from scratch I think (so more Frankenstein (life from previously living material) than genesis (new life from scratch) perhaps?) |
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may be a step or two between those two steps not covered yet, but Google [amino acid to dna conversion tool] & you'll get some interesting hits |
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Well, I'm at least putting this in the category of "hard science fiction" in that you could make a plausible story about killing people and bringing them back to life and screwing up the process to create an unholy army of the walking dead. |
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Actually I think THAT'S probably been baked. There's probably been as much "research" done by Hollywood into how people can be turned into zombies as the medical community has put into curing cancer. |
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To his credit, he made that cider himself, and rolled that stogie himself out of materials at hand, and made enough of both to share. |
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I loved that Miller-Urey experiment. I remember the image of the huge glass flask, its inside smeared with scheming shoggoth stuff. I think I saw that about the same time Electric Company had the skit with the Blob which I will link; check out young Morgan Freeman. |
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// scheming shoggoth stuff. // |
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// I'm at least putting this in the category of "hard science fiction" // |
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No you're not, you've put it in Other:[general] .... |
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// this went from 0 to nasty in such short order // // nope didn't mean to insult you doc // |
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// I loved that Miller-Urey experiment // |
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ditto - when I was about 12 & first heard of it I dreamed of people sending lots of little glass orbs of electrically agitated chemical soup tumbling through space to seed far away planets with new & unique life |
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though I'd use payloads of algae, Tardigrades & some extremophiles & rely on natural selection to diversify them wherever they landed now |
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There's a massive amount of ionizing radiation out there, [Skewed] - if whatever you send is DNA-based, it will need to be inside some very thick shielding to avoid rapid degradation. |
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I was 12 - didn't think of that then :) |
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though I have seen some NASA footage where they where experimenting with that kind of thing to see what might survive in space & the subsequent impact |
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I'm not sure (would have to try & find some reference to it on-line or something) but I think there were one or two single cell extremophile type organisms that survived almost anything they threw at them |
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off the top of my head Tardigrades are tough little buggers, shouldn't survive the impact but I think (?) they survive pretty well in space |
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yup - just finished the search, Tardigrades can survive in space, they stitch their DNA back together after it's broken up by desiccation, that may be part of how they get around the radiation damage - more prolonged exposure may be a problem but it suggests fairly minimal shielding might be adequate to overcome that |
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// suggests fairly minimal shielding might be adequate // |
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//// suggests fairly minimal shielding might be adequate // |
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I think there's already a framed version of that handing on
the old Soviet Nuclear design bureau. |
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//just for laughs tell him my idea and if he still wants to be
friends with you let me know what he said// |
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Thing is, it's not exactly a daft idea but it's not really along
the right lines. We can break organisms down into
component parts - in fact we do it already. You can, for
example, buy fully synthetic in-vitro transcription/translation
kits which will, given whatever DNA you like, go through the
whole rigmarole of transcribing the genes into RNA and then
translating that into proteins. We can also throw in the
relevant bits of the respiratory pathway so that those kits will
keep themselves topped up with ATP (ie, energy). We could,
for that matter, throw in the machinery to replicate DNA. |
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We also understand, reasonably well, how cells make
membranes or cell walls, and divide to make new cells. We
know all the bits, but we can't put them together in quite the
right way to jump-start the cell. But there isn't really a deep
mystery there. Probably Craig <spit> Venter's lot will do
something like this soon, and it will create a big hoo-hah, but
it won't teach us a great deal. |
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The _really_ deep mystery is how did life get started. Once
it's started, it's easy to produce bacteria, elephants or clowns
- getting started is the only real mystery. Life certainly
started out very, very simple - a small handful of molecules
that could, together, make copies of themselves. After that,
you just crank the handle. |
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That's why Phil is trying to create self-replicating RNA. It's
not quite simple enough to have been the very first "life", but
it's close. And if we can make one self-replicator out of RNA,
we will find other, simpler self-replicators that are better
candidates for the first life. |
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//Jesus Christ Max, what the hell are you doing hanging out
with us dummies?// I am one of us dummies. Come to think
of it, I know or have known half a dozen Nobel laureates,
most of whom were dummies - just very persistent and clever
dummies. |
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They're nothing special ... they put their trousers on one leg at a time, just like everyone else*. |
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There's a downside to everthing, isn't there ? |
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*Except for Stephen Hawking, who's something of a special case ... |
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