Biofuels Researcher Moves Closer to Creating Artificial Life
A well-known biofuels researcher at Harvard has developed a synthetic ribosome — one of the fundamental building blocks for creating artificial life — which, initially, could have major implications for the creation of designer enzymes to make cheaper and more energy efficient cellulosic ethanol.
Dr. George Church, co-founder of the next generation biofuels company LS9, made the stunning announcement in a telephone call with reporters.
“If you are going to make synthetic life that is anything like current life … you have got to have this … biological machine,” Dr. Church said in comments to Reuters.
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Possibilities for biofuels research include the creation of new enzymes to more efficiently break down cellulosic material for advanced biofuels, or engineering new forms of life that have higher amounts of starch content for biofuels production.
Dr. Church said that his research has not yet been published in a scientifically peer-reviewed journal, but that he and his research partner, Mike Jewett, have already synthesized an artificial version of the protein that makes fireflies glow — luciferase.
Source: Biofuels Digest
Image Credit: One example of the atomic structure of RNA. Proteins are shown in blue and the single RNA strand in orange. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Cloning and recombinant gene technologies, along with directed evolution and protein engineering have already provided us the tools we need to design and mass-produce better enzymes for cellulosic ethanol production. While this is cool news, I dont think it will have the applications this article dreams of.
On the other hand, LS9 is an exciting company, you can read more about it here:
http://optimism.thorscave.com/2008/12/07/startup-highlight-ls9-inc/
I never thought that artificial life would be based on a molecular level, especially at the nucleus. Ribosomes participate actively in the DNA expression of genes into proteins, which means that building artificial life might go all the way to the DNA level.