Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge Unexplained Scientific Principles

Now, a little defense for Tacit! His term "from scratch" should not be taken at face value. We cannot make proteins by a synthetic process because of their complexity. But we can make them in a test tube using isolated cell's protein synthesis machinery. This should be legitimate within "from scratch". If we knew what and how to mix in order to create a living cell, we could possibly make one that would be really "alive". It does not mean that we have to make all the molecules from basic bricks - this would be counterproductive and extremely expensive. Further, I do not believe that life entails some magic "ether" that has to be added to the cell components in order to bring cell into full gear with autoregulation and ability to divide. I was just saying that we are rather far from this goal despite assurances of sensationalist biologists-entrepreneurs. And let us not mix awful and rather stupid experiments by Mengele, especially the twin "studies" with a noble cause of creating "new forms of life" for the betterment of mankind and for agricultural and industrial purposes. But the major caveat would be a global regulation of such activities. We would not like to see some new form of life eating up the rest of the planet