Let's try to avoid creating something with "molecular acid for blood," shall we?

zarq — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 09:36:16 -0800

Dmitar Sasselov is an astrophysicist, Director of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard and a co-investigator of the Kepler space telescope project to find Earth-like planets around the Cygnus constellation and discover extraterrestrial life. But no matter how successful the Kepler project may be, it still won't answer the most fundamental questions of astrobiology: How diverse is life in the universe? If alien life exists, will it have Earthly DNA and proteins? Or will it run on something else? So Dr. Sasselov has decided to collaborate with two synthetic biologists, asking them to create a life form based on mirror-image versions of what we know as the essential building blocks of living things on Earth. From the Wired Article: ...go to the synthetic biologists Jack Szostak and George Church. Ask them to create a life-form that runs on an operating system different from our own, based on mirror-image versions of earthly proteins and DNA. Let these alien cells grow and mutate, and see how they survive. If it worked, those new cells—Church called them “mirror life”—could answer one of the deepest questions about the origin of life, not just here on Earth but everywhere in the universe. They might also open up new avenues of discovery in materials science, fuel synthesis, and pharmaceutical research. On the down side, though, mirror life wouldn’t have any predators or diseases to limit its reproduction. They would have to keep an eye on that.
In July, Dr. Sasselov's TED talk (also linked above) was widely misinterpreted by the press. Kepler space telescope: previously on Metafilter. Also, this post is tangentially related.

MetaFilter posts tagged with szostak

Let's try to avoid creating something with "molecular acid for blood," shall we?