J. Craig Venter

One of the most prolific scientists intent on creating synthetic life is Dr. J. Craig Venter. The man's actually got a whole institute named after him. Earlier this year, the Science section of wired.com reported on findings published in the magazine Science regarding the creation of the "first man-made genome" by Venter and colleagues. Essentially, yeast was used to "stitch together four long strands of DNA into the genome of a bacterium". This research, though, isn't focused so much on the origin of life but rather on how humans can control the output of synthetic organisms to their own advantage. Think indentured bacteria spewing forth biofuels.

Artificial Life

There are a number of labs throughout the US and around the world trying to understand just how life originated in the universe and/or on planet Earth. A number of these labs approach the question by attempting to synthesize life themselves, by using software, hardware, or chemical processes. Obviously, creating a computer program that is able to simulate the patterns of stripes on a zebra doesn't lead directly to the conclusion that mother nature is actually a computer programmer, but may shed some light on possible mechanisms for the creation of biological form and how to search for those mechanisms.

As mentioned above, there are three different types of methods used in the field of artificial life. Simulations using computer programs are referred to as "soft" artificial life, those using robotic applications are referred to as "hard" artificial life, while those using biochemistry are referred to as "wet" artificial life. While computer simulations and robots are neat-looking, the creation of synthetic life, or primitive-looking cells that could represent the ancestors of biological life, is the holy grail of Astrobiology, as well as a multitude of fields in the Life Sciences.

The First Cells?

Harvard scientists believe they are closer to understanding how cells arose, nearly 3.5 billion years ago. Under just the right conditions, fatty acids (which were stirred up by the ever-popular hydrothermal vents) would spontaneously arrange themselves, or self-organize, into small vesicles. These vesicles could have led, then, to what researchers have endearingly dubbed "protocells". This protocell theory has been around for quite a while, but the Harvard team took it a step further by modeling a protocell that is "capable of building, copying and containing DNA". This seems to imply that once DNA is accounted for within a cell, then the question becomes merely one of time; given enough of it (time, that is), all other, more complex, forms of life can be easily explained through the process of natural selection. While the protocell theory is an interesting one, perhaps the question of increasing complexity should not be merely waved away with the convenient wand of natural selection.

So what exactly is ASTROBIOLOGY and why is it important? (Better yet, why are millions of dollars of government funding being spent on it annually?) NewScientistSpace has a special section on the field of astrobiology, which you can check out here. (It's a few years old, but it gives a good overview)

According to Astrobiology Magazine, "Many of the ingredients for life formed in outer space. The Earth formed from star dust, and later meteorites and comets delivered even more materials to our planet. But scientists are still unsure which molecules played the most important roles in life's origin." The Pinwheel Galaxy, pictured above, is being studied to further the theory that organic molecules present in outer space could have been responsible for the origin of life on Earth. Read more here.

From Molecular Clouds to the Origin of Life

Many evolutionary biologists are wary of the "origin of life" debate, as Darwinian dogma and the laws of natural selection can do little to explain how life arose from non-life. A great number of astrobiologists, on the other hand, don't fear the issue, as they are not limited by Darwin. They look to concepts of self-organization, though they mainly focus on chemical processes, as discussed in this paper, authored by researchers in the Astrobiology Group at Leiden University.

Interview with Robert Hazen

Independent journalist Suzan Mazur, of "Altenberg 16" fame, has recently posted her interview with Geophysicist (and trumpet player, it turns out) Robert Hazen. Read the interview here.