The Evolution of RNA and DNA

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We don't yet have an example of synthetic single molecules that reproduce themselves. We did explain to us what we've heard in the news. There was several years ago we heard that Craig Ventner made artificial life. But it all depends on what you mean. So forget about whether he made artificial life or not. What did he do? He took a bacteria called mycoplasma which is the smallest known independently living cell. They're parasites but they live outside of cells. And then they grew a whole bunch of those mutant bacteria. Then how do you make it to be actually alive? Because you take that synthetic genome that DNA that was synthesized on a machine and have never been alive

Scientists can’t quite agree on how to define “life,” but that hasn’t stopped them from studying it, looking for it elsewhere, or even trying to create it. Kate Adamala is one of a number of scientists engaged in the ambitious project of trying to create living cells, or something approximating them, starting from entirely non-living ingredients. Impressive progress has already been made. Designing cells from scratch will have obvious uses is biology and medicine, but also allow us to build biological robots and computers, as well as helping us understand how life could have arisen in the first place, and what it might look like on other planets.

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Katarzyna (Kate) Adamala received her Ph.D. working with Pier Luigi Luisi at the University of Rome and Jack Szostak at Harvard. She is currently an assistant professor of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of Minnesota. She is a member of the Build-A-Cell international collaboration, which brings together multiple groups to work on constructing artificial life.

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