Evolution Engineered

“Life-like evolution in a test tube” is the title of an article at Cosmos Magazine that describes a potential breakthrough in Origin-of-Life (OOL) research.  (HT RichardtHughes at AtBC )

For the first time, scientists have synthesized RNA enzymes – ribonucleic acid enzymes also known as ribozymes – that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components.

If true, this could help shed light on the RNA-World and create many different and intriguing lines of research. 

That said, there’s an obvious caveat: these RNA molecules were designed. For a purely natural RNA-World scenario to be true, scientists would have to show that a self-replicating RNA could have arisen through natural means, and last time I checked, they ain’t even close to demonstrating this.

Keep in mind I am NOT questioning whether evolutionary mechanisms exist. It is obvious that they do exist and function in nature. However, take a good look at what Dr. Joyce and his colleagues did: they took their knowledge of how living things work and change/evolve, and used it to create an RNA molecule that “evolves” (or runs under the properties of known evolutionary mechanisms). This is very similar to what engineers do, using their knowledge of the known world/universe to create an object or system to suit some predetermined function(s) or design objective(s). In essence, what Joyce et al. did was attempt to engineer life.

As if to reinforce the engineering aspect of the research, the article goes on to say:

The ultimate goal is to create genetic systems that behave like life, and are for all intents ‘life’ as we know it, but arose without using biological systems.

“The aim is to create systems that have inventive capabilities, that can develop novel solutions to challenges posed by the environment. But that we don’t have yet,” [molecular biologist Gerald Joyce] said. …

[Joyce continues] “They are synthetic genetic systems, and they are evolving. But they’re not living because they don’t yet show the capacity to invent functions out of whole cloth [independently from basic building blocks].

“The idea is to given them enough information wherewithal [build up enough genetic informaton] so they can start inventing their own solutions, rather than just optimising existing solutions,” he added.

To recap, Joyce et al. “create[d] … [synthetic] genetic systems that behave like life” (i.e. replicate and pass on genetic information – a simple design objective). Further research will have the goal of ”… creat[ing] systems that have inventive capabilities, that can develop novel solutions to challenges posed by the environment.” (i.e. predetermined function). To accomplish this, the researchers aim to “give them enough information wherewithal [build up enough genetic informaton] so they can start inventing their own solutions, rather than just optimising existing solutions…”

Golly gee! That sure sounds a lot like engineering and front-loading to me.

“Front-loading is the investment of a significant amount of information at the initial stage of evolution (the first life forms) whereby this information shapes and constrains subsequent evolution through its dissipation.”
p.147, The Design Matrix by Mike Gene

I thought FLE/design couldn’t lead to fruitful research. Silly me!

All kidding aside, this could set the stage for interesting new OOL research. Stay tuned!

Scientists may have figured out the chemistry that sparked the beginning of life on Earth.

The above quote was the start of an interesting article at ScienceNews.org (HT to kornbelt888). There are two interesting aspects to it.

The first is an experimental breakthrough:

While reactions to make RNA from ancient precursors worked on paper, the chemistry didn’t work in the lab. And some scientists thought even RNA molecules were too complex to have spontaneously formed in the primordial soup. [John] Sutherland [of University of Manchester in England] and his colleagues have shown the reactions are possible.

The second is a cautionary note:

“But while this is a step forward, it’s not the whole picture,” [James] Ferris [of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute] points out. “It’s not as simple as putting compounds in a beaker and mixing it up. It’s a series of steps. You still have to stop and purify and then do the next step, and that probably didn’t happen in the ancient world.”

The RNA world scenario is still suspect, but this latest study is still impressive. Let’s face it, a new method of forming RNA (whether it’s in the lab or not) is interesting.

I do like the qualification by James Ferris. It is a step forward, but it in no way represents a natural method of forming RNA. If anything, the experiment and its findings point towards teleology and design rather than non-teleology and mindless mechanisms. 

Just saying, that’s all.