[extropy-chat] Life Built to Order

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Los Alamos scientist Steen Rasmussen plans to one-up nature by
cobbling together a brand-new creature that reproduces and evolves. Is
he making a biotech marvel that will do our bidding, or a
test-tube-size Frankenstein monster?
Los Alamos, famed birthplace of the atomic bomb, has just awarded
Rasmussen nearly $5 million to attempt an experiment as bold as the
one that drew scientists to this pine-dotted New Mexico mesa back in
the 1940s: He intends to create a brand-new life-form.
The team's "protocell" will be thousands of times as small as a
typical bacterium and far more primitive. But if all goes as planned,
it will possess the defining characteristics of life: It will spawn
offspring, generate its own energy, even evolve. Left unspoken was
this: If Rasmussen, who first started contemplating protocells seven
years ago, and his colleagues succeed, they will have crossed a
threshold, bestowing on humankind powers that now belong exclusively
to nature (or to God, depending on your beliefs).
For most of his 49 years, the Danish-born theoretical physicist has
been obsessed with understanding what makes life possible. In
attempting to make his own version, he tossed aside biology textbooks
and asked himself, What's the simplest living system I can imagine?
The result is that his protocell looks like no life-form anyone has
ever seen. "I'm sort of out in the extreme," he confesses.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicine/article/0,20967,1014147,00.html