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Abiogenesis and Natural Selection Simulation in the Lab
Abiogenesis is the process by which living matter arose from non-living matter. Scientists can create organic compounds in the lab, including some of the life-essential amino acids, by simulating conditions on earth billions of years ago. Two-carbon sugar, such as the sugar in the observed galactic sugar clouds, is not far removed from RNA. In the presence of minerals such as borax, simple sugars stop reacting at five carbons, the carbon sugars of life. Not only that, a form of evolution by natural selection (but not life) was set in motion in the lab in some remarkable experiments by the molecular biologist Sol Spiegelman.
DNA replication, like the generation of sentences and musical phrases, is combinatorial. A finite number of genes creates a practically infinite number of combinations. That’s why the absolute number of genes in the genome of a given species has practically nothing to do with the complexity of the organism. Humans have only about 25,000 to 30,000 genes. Other species have more.
However, scientists will never be able to artificially create life as we know it in a lab, for several good reasons:
- The first life on earth evolved without oxygen. Even today, living organisms at the bottom of the ocean surrounding undersea vents metabolize sulphur instead of oxygen.
- DNA almost certainly had a replicating forerunner, long extinct.
- Life today consists of cells, which are extremely complex, exquisitely functioning units that took billions of years to evolve from scratch. They contain many thousands of molecules and ions. No one is going to artificially create a living cell in the lab from scratch anytime soon.