Origin of life: Current efforts to create life, or else find alternative life

In "Second Genesis: Life, but not as we know it," Bob Holmes (New Scientist, March 11, 2009) provides a summary of attempts to create artificial life (paywall).

We're still stuck with Life 1.0, the stuff that first quickened at least 3.5 billion years ago. There's been nothing new under the sun since then, as far as we know.

That looks likely to change. Around the world, several labs are drawing close to the threshold of a second genesis, an achievement that some would call one of the most profound scientific breakthroughs of all time.

However,

Venter's team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, plans to remove the genome from an existing bacterial cell and replace it with one of their own design. If successful, this will indeed result in a novel life form, but it is a far cry from the ultimate goal of a second genesis, as Venter would be the first to admit.

Other teams, however, are striving directly for that ultimate goal. The most ambitious of them do not even rely on the standard set of molecular parts, but seek to redesign a living system from first principles. If successful, they would provide an entirely new form ...

Meanwhile, others look for a shadow biosphere, an independent type of life sharing the planet with us.

My sense is that the people who use existing manufactured parts will have the best luck with their work.

Here's University of Colorado (Boulder) philosophy prof Carol Cleland'sargument in Astrobiology Magazine (12/01/06) for looking for a shadow biosphere:

The discovery of a shadow microbial biosphere would be philosophically and scientifically important. It is clear that familiar Earth life has a common origin, and hence represents a single example of life. Logically speaking, one cannot generalize on the basis of a single example. If we are to achieve a satisfactory understanding of the general nature of life, we need examples of unfamiliar forms of life.

Also, Holly Hight asks ("Does Earth harbour a shadow biosphere of alien life," Cosmos: The Science of Everything, 16 February, 2009 ):

Finding life that doesn't fit with the types we already know would be a strong indication that life developed more than one time here on Earth, increasing the chances of finding it elsewhere, said Paul Davies, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University in Tempe.

But nobody has ever seriously searched for microorganisms - or any form of life - different from the carbon-based, DNA-centred type of life about which we have long known.

If we do look, Davies said, "It's entirely feasible that we'll find a shadow biosphere," he told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago.

"Our search for life [has been] based on our assumptions of life as we know it. Weird life and normal life could be intermingled, and filtering out the things we understand about life as we know it from the things we don't understand is tricky."

It must be hard to write science fiction these days.

Origin of life: Intelligent design theory and creating life in the lab

Over at Uncommon Descent, I responded to a commenter who thinksthat the ability to create artificial life would somehow prove that life got started on Earth by chance. I don't agree, and here is why:

... producing life in the lab is by definition not naturalistic, because the life designer is providing all the input in terms of selected chemicals, interactions, temperature, et cetera.

It would prove that life can be created on Earth by an intelligent non-divine designer.

That isn’t certain as yet - hence the number of great scientists who have flirted with panspermia.

We would never know if that was the path life actually took, or if any such path could occur by accident.

The commenter thought that I was "clinging on to" some human being involved, and I replied,

... "cling onto ’some human was involved’”? But that is a given if a human creates life in the lab!

If I understand what you are saying, you mean that if life could be created by human design in a lab, it could happen by natural selection on the early Earth too.

I don’t know that that follows at all.

For one thing, we may never be sure of conditions on the early Earth.

A real danger is that we will assume that they must have been like what happened in the lab because we made it work that way.

Not necessarily a valid inference, and maybe a dead end for future science!

The only thing that the creation of artificial life in the lab would show is that the level of design need not be God-like.

Failure to create life in the lab does not demonstrate the reverse, but suggests it (On the other hand, we might not have got the method right … ).

For the record, I believe it more likely that scientists will create life in the lab than that they will definitively show what happened on early Earth.

That is because it is easier to solve a present-day problem when you are allowed to use any method that works than it is to retrace a series of steps without much reliable information.

Here’s something to think about: We never see life getting started from nothing. It is always passed on from a previous instance of life.

That shows that starting life is very difficult - though obviously not impossible!

The commenter then suggested helpfully that we limit ourselves to the conditions on the early Earth. But agian,

..., if we do not know for sure what happened at the origin of life, how can we reasonably limit ourselves to those conditions?

Given the low probabilities of life’s origin, “likely” won’t cut it.

Actually, I think the whole OoL project a waste of time for precisely that reason.

If life (in the sense in which we normally use the term*) is created in a lab, that shows that intelligent (but non-divine) design can create life.

That’s all it shows.

The vulnerable theory, if someone wants to advance it, is that intelligence at the human level cannot create life.

ID says that a design input is required, and that is not refuted by lab life. Quite the contrary.

I should perhaps add that I think lab life unlikely. But not as unlikely as discovering exactly what happened at the origin of life.

PS: the assumption that the intelligence required to create life must - by its very nature - be a divine intelligence is additional to the design inference, so far as I can see.

Replying to another commenter,

I would consider a design hypothesis falsified if we saw life regularly arising from scratch under all sorts of conditions - provided we were certain that there was no underlying design in the universe that created that outcome.

Otherwise, how would we know?

But we never see life arising, and so far no one has created it in the lab.

So any claim that life can arise by chance alone, in accord with the presumed laws of the universe, is a claim based purely on faith at present.

I find surreal the fact that such a claim is considered “science” but any contrary assertion is considered “religion”.

I think a chance origin of life extremely unlikely in this universe, from what I have read, and also doubt that anything like life will soon be created in the lab.

But if it is, I would say it is a victory for design, not chance. After all, the creators only have the design. They do not have the chance.