Artificial Life

Adnan balboa19@idt.net
Mon, 21 Dec 1998 03:28:15 -0600 (00914254095, 3.0.5.32.19981221032815.008a0730@idt.net) 

Feom:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_217000/217054.stm


             Wednesday, November 18, 1998 Published at 23:56 GMT 


             Sci/Tech

             German scientists have created artificial life in the
             laboratory. They have made molecules that are capable
             of copying themselves. Although several labs around the
             world have done the same, these molecules can evolve
             as well. 

             The team of scientists from the University of Bochum
             hope the molecules can be used to produce new drugs
             and even new materials. 

             The self-replicating molecules may also give us clues to
             how life itself evolved on Earth. 

             Primitive life was probably a molecule closely related to
             DNA, called RNA, which managed to replicate itself, and
             evolved to become more adept at survival and
             reproduction. 

             The Germans have gone further than anyone in
             mimicking this behaviour. 

             "The difference is that our molecule has the type of
             growth that is necessary to allow artificial evolution...that
             is, exponential growth, in which the number of molecules
             grows in what's known as geometric progression, that is
             1, 2, 4, 8, 16. doubling each time," said Professor
             Gunther von Kiedrowski, who led the research. 

             No population can go on growing at that rate - there is
             not room for it. So, just as happens with animals and
             plants, the toughest, fittest molecules survive and go on
             replicating and the others are destroyed. 

             Struggle for existence 

             The fittest survive in the struggle for existence. As
             Charles Darwin discovered, this is how evolution works.
             So Gunther von Kiedrowski has made a molecule which,
             like RNA on our primitive planet around 3500 million
             years ago, is able to evolve. 

             Life on Earth evolved into all its many shapes because
             those shapes helped it to survive. For example, the
             giraffe's neck helped it to gather high-up leaves. But the
             conditions surrounding life evolving in the lab can be
             changed so that it has to evolve in particular directions in
             order to survive and replicate. 

             This controlled evolution can be used to produce useful
             things, like drugs. 

             "We want to make them evolve because there are
             industrial applications for evolving molecules," the
             professor said. 

             "Molecules can be evolved into drugs, for example. We
             hope that in the future we will be able to develop new
             drugs in this way." 

             The molecules replicate and evolve on a solid surface,
             lending weight to the idea that the first life on Earth did
             the same, rather than evolving in stagnant pools of soupy
             organic compounds. 

             The new research is published in Nature.