New Life?

F

Frank Deis

Frank Deis

This is Szostak, who thinks that if he gets genes inside a membrane, he'll have a living cell.

Of course to me, it's like building a library full of books with no people inside and no doors. Sooner or later those books will read themselves, and write some more books, and build new libraries. Right?

Just carrying on the tradition of wildly irrelevant discussions from the other Wine Board...

Frank
 
Well, yes, if nothing eats the library first.

I've always liked Szostak, although I haven't seen him in years.
 
originally posted by Frank Deis:
New Life?http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html

This is Szostak, who thinks that if he gets genes inside a membrane, he'll have a living cell.

Of course to me, it's like building a library full of books with no people inside and no doors. Sooner or later those books will read themselves, and write some more books, and build new libraries. Right?
Click to expand...

Well, Szostak comes to this from his (brilliant) earlier work making RNA 'aptamers,' so he does bring a wee bit of bias to the endeavor. He's been doing this now for over a decade (I saw him give a talk on it while I was on sabbatical at Berkeley in '05). He's a bright guy and I'm sure that some interesting stuff will emerge from it, but the whole "creating life" angle has always seemed a bit hyperbolic to me.

Mark Lipton
 
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