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Regenesis—tweaking biology
In 1953, chemist Stanley Miller showed that just running electricity through a soup of basic chemicals created the kinds of complex proteins needed for life.
Creating RNA that could copy itself [a feat that won him the Nobel Prize] doesn't prove that's the way life originated, but if you could get something to work in the laboratory, it's at least plausible.
- Dr. Stanley L. Miller, University of California San Diego
Creating RNA that could copy itself [a feat that won him the Nobel Prize] doesn't prove that's the way life originated, but if you could get something to work in the laboratory, it's at least plausible.
- Dr. Stanley L. Miller, University of California San Diego
New York, NY - Four billion years ago, the first simple life emerged in Earth's oceans, setting in motion a process driven by Darwinian competition and pure dumb luck that resulted in everything from E. coli to oak trees, from tyrannosaurs to people. What if we could just yell "do-over"?
Questions about how much biology can be tweaked are neither merely academic nor just fodder for science fiction. Researchers are now working to re-build DNA, proteins and even cells in a new field called synthetic biology.