Life Out There: Eden in a Test Tube: To better recognize extraterrestrial life should they come upon it, scientists are working to create simple life forms in a lab. But, as Dennis Overbye reports, they first have to agree what life is.
SAN DIEGO — Here in a laboratory perched on the edge of the continent, researchers are trying to construct Life As We Don’t Know It in a thimbleful of liquid.
Generations of scientists, children and science fiction fans have grown up presuming that humanity’s first encounter with alien life will happen in a red sand dune on Mars, or in an enigmatic radio signal from some obscure star.
But it could soon happen right here onEarth, according to a handful of chemists and biologists who are using the tools of modern genetics to try to generate the Frankensteinian spark that will jump the gap separating the inanimate and the animate. The day is coming, they say, when chemicals in a test tube will come to life.
Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/science/28life.html?_r=1
http://news.discovery.com/tech/artificial-intelligence-made-from-dna-110727.html
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