• Neuroscience & Pharmacology Discussion Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Recent Journal Articles Chemistry Mega-Thread
    FREE Chemistry Databases! Self-Education Guide

  • N&PD Moderators: Skorpio

Why cant you make life ?

webbykevin

webbykevin

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 29, 2010
Messages
1,719
You guys seem to be experts in the manipulation of chemistry so I have a question for you.

Why cant you use the knowledge that we have from biology and the lab skills that we have in chemistry and combine these to produce life from a series of chemical reactions/bonds/whatever, (I'm not a chemist so forgive my simple attempts to discuss your area of science with you.

But from what I understand, there are somewhere around 90 chemical elements that occur in nature but it is the same few (under 20) that form the basis of all living matter.

Of these, carbon's importance lies in its ability to form complex chains and rings that can then be built into many possible combination's.

Then we have the amino acids, again just 20 of these are the the basis for all proteins, proteins are produced by a code contained in just 4 molecules called nucleotide bases.

So my question is, why cant humble bench top chemists such as yourselves manipulate the elements and so forth to produce life ?

At what point does the process fail, (I suppose you need some kind of cosmic deity to inject a soul or something - lol) but seriously, what is the barrier stopping this happening ?

Or am I completely wrong and you can mix some rocks and some crystals in a test tube and create a little living being of some sort.

Or does the fact that you need to add say the protein take it away from chemistry and into biology because protein is already some kind of life or has some kind of lifeforce already in it.

So is there only so far you can go with chemicals before you have to add something already alive? which is not you creating life.

So can you, from scratch, with no life present, create life, and if not why not ?

forgive me if it's a dumb question but I couldn't think of a better group of people to ask than yourselves.

thanks guys

webby
 
Last edited:
Did you actually read or understand that article? That's not the same as creating life. Creating DNA isn't anything new. Creating an organisms entire set of DNA and implanting it into a cell is new, and a major step forward, but it says more about our improving ability to produce the DNA than it does about our ability to produce new life.

Actually creating an entire cell from scratch that goes on to live and reproduce will probably happen within the next decade, but it hasn't happened yet. I forget which species they're using as a template, but I'm pretty sure it comes from the human genital tract (that bit might be the only reason I remember it).
 
"Bench top chemists" (hell even most advanced biochemists) lack the precision to stick protien, fats, and other assorted chemicals together into cells reliably and with enough precision to make things like a cell wall work and keep the guts of the cell in. The reason it's not as simple as "add reagent A to solvent B and add some C" is because cells rely a lot on their high-level structure and most chemistry is rather like shooting a block of granite with a 12 gauge to make a statue.
Currently about the best you can hope for is to hijack an existing cell, otherwise you'll end up with a fatty emulsion of DNA and protiens.
 
I'm no expert, but I think the simple answer to the question is that it isn't that easy because there is more to biology than just chemistry. A living cell is a very complex nano-scale machine, you can't simply just mix up the correct chemicals and get a living cell any more than you can mix up a bunch of chemicals in a big vat and get a car. It's not just the right molecules etc that are required, they also have to be arranged correctly to make a working "machine". It's like the difference between a bucket of sand and a silicon computer chip.
 
^^Its still "just" chemistry. But nature has very elaborate ways of making it work. Indeed proteins are tiny molecular "machines", but they still rely on principles from organic chemistry.
 
Probabilities, time, energetics, physical motion, inter- and intramolecular interactions, environmental cues, resources, etc etc etc and so forth and so on ad infinitum it may seem like at times all are contributors to the interactions that nucleotides, proteins, lipids and other molecules make inside a successful life form, including individual cells.

Sure you can bundle that all up to general chemistry (not just organic!) principles because all of it pretty much crosses over, but the cell is (to our knowledge) the original master chemist. We are simply one of its many objects of creation.
 
so maybe the missing pieces of the puzzle could be perhaps found in electromagnetic radiation for example, with the organism or compound or bag of dna and proteins washing around in an entropic sludge responding to an external stimulus from outside of the actual chemistry taking place. for example a burst of light waves, a magnetic field etc... to if you like kick start self sustaining life force of some kind, (the will to live ?), some energy from the cosmos that is the x factor in beating decay or stabilization states, maybe stabilization is the first step to this.

which brings us to..... consciousness, and pet rocks lol

stabilization leading to a state of boredom maybe, which invokes the notion of some kind of self awareness, the bag of stuff suddenly thinking in some however crude way, "hey. I am a bag of stuff" leading to "what else can I do", or "what comes next".

leading eventually to collections of sentient cells on the surface of a biosphere shooting collections of particles upwards until they escaped the gravitational pull of the planet, and walked on the moon.


hmmmmm


fascinating stuff though, i'm inspired to do further research.

thanks for the input so far, all very helpfull.
 
Last edited:
webbykevin said:
Why cant you use the knowledge that we have from biology and the lab skills that we have in chemistry and combine these to produce life from a series of chemical reactions/bonds/whatever, (I'm not a chemist so forgive my simple attempts to discuss your area of science with you.
Click to expand...
The answer to your question is extremely simple: the sum-total of all human knowledge of biochemistry is still not sufficient enough to create a living organism from scratch. And that is making the huge assumption that life really is nothing more than a series of chemical-reactions.

This thread should have been posted in P&S or S&T btw, as it has nothing to do with drugs.
 
At the fringes of what we define as life we can already create viruses from components, and it is only a matter of time before prokaryotes are created.
Venter and team have worked out the minimum genetic material required to create life up until now they have cheated and stuck their synthetic genome into a bacteria which obviously already had the structures needed by the synthetic genome. the next step is to make a simple cell taking advantage of molecular self assembly and using components extracted from living organisms, this we will see less than 5 years from now then following on I think we will see simple true synthetic life in less than 20 years.

I think we should move this thread,
 
Hammilton said:
I forget which species they're using as a template, but I'm pretty sure it comes from the human genital tract (that bit might be the only reason I remember it).
Click to expand...

Narrator: The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections. - Idiocracy
 
Jamshyd said:
This thread should have been posted in P&S or S&T btw, as it has nothing to do with drugs.[/color]
Click to expand...



i thought of that too before i posted, but not all those alan watts types are chemists. so thats why i came here, and i think it was the right place to ask because the information I got back was more scientific and less spiritual or philosophical, which is what i was after.

I dont want to get into the god particle rubbish, I was interested in the chemistry and the pure science.

And it does in a way tie in with drugs because part of this line of enquiry was sparked in me by a conversation with the mushroom entity, a mind meeting mind experience, and it was a pretty advanced drug experience i can promise you that :)

but sure move it to the god bunch if you must, I just like hanging out with scientists more.

:)
 
One thing I did pick out from this thread as interesting came from the comments on the linked article.......


One guy said..{quote}"In your face god! We did in 200k years what it took you 10b! Now, all you have to do is build a church and tell us how great we are every sunday. I hope we win, creator of the month..."{end quote}

and I laughed when I first read that, but this was an interesting reply he got that I do feel has relevance to the way this counterculture/subculture of ours (whatever you wanna call it) deals with its relationship to the anti drug lobby

(quote}"Robert, please be careful with the attacks on god and your statement of human arrogance regarding our creating life. The wacky right does not need any more encouragement and statements like that only inflame them more"{end quote}

This is important to remember, the reason that I can't use substances even as natural and mentally healing as psylocybin is because at some point someones button got pushed in the conservative church going voters, and it is still a challenge as to how we try and effectively bridge that gap !
 
webbykevin, if you are so curious about creating life, go stick your penis into a vagina and you can create life right from the very basics. its not rocket science and its the easiest thing. every human can create life so i dont know why you guys wasted your time trying to come up with complex methods of it *shrugs*
 
asecin said:
webbykevin, if you are so curious about creating life, go stick your penis into a vagina and you can create life right from the very basics. its not rocket science and its the easiest thing. every human can create life so i dont know why you guys wasted your time trying to come up with complex methods of it *shrugs*
Click to expand...



I have tried that method, with mixed results, I was not actually talking about the process your mum and dad went through in order to make you, I was enquiring into making intelligent life !

touche
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top