Scientists aim for “Darwinian evolution” with an artificial life project

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European scientists have begun work on a project to create simple forms of life from scratch in the laboratory, capitalizing on theoretical advances and experiments in the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology.

Starting with inanimate chemicals, the researchers aim to produce metabolically active cells that grow, divide and exhibit “Darwinian evolution” within six years.

The project “MiniLife” of 13 million euros, which is financed by the European Research Council and involves biologists and chemists from several universities, it could be the first in the world to reach the minimum criteria for a synthetic life system.

“The success will constitute a landmark achievement in basic science,” said Eörs Szathmáry, director of the Center for Conceptual Foundations of Science at the Parmenides Foundation in Germany, who is a principal investigator on the ERC grant. “The de-novo creation of living systems is a long-standing dream of humanity.”

John Sutherland, who works on the chemistry of early life at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, said the project joins a growing effort around the world to “create minimal living systems”.

Sutherland, who is not involved in the MiniLife project, added: “This is driven by the perennial desire to understand how life originated on Earth and whether it could also have originated elsewhere in the observable universe” .

Other artificial life researchers work with the known building blocks of life on Earth, particularly the nucleotides that make up ribonucleic acid. The ERC project, in contrast, really aims to start from scratch, without using molecules that are themselves products of evolution.

“We abstract from known life forms because they are highly evolved creatures,” said Szathmáry, “and simplify to arrive at a minimalist formulation.”

MiniLife researchers are evaluating four systems that could, individually, or in combination, be developed on a minimum life basis. All are “autocatalytic”, an essential property for self-replication in which a chemical reaction is catalyzed by its products.

A candidate is the formative reaction. The process, discovered in the 19th century, converts an extremely simple chemical, formaldehyde, into an increasingly diverse and complex series of sugar molecules. When the reaction is fed with formaldehyde, the behavior of the drops varies with the composition of sugars in them.

“Some grow faster and divide faster than others,” said Andrew Griffiths, a MiniLife researcher at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris. “We ended up with the emergence of something equivalent to fitness in biology, like a mixture of slow- and fast-growing bacteria, but in a very simple chemical system.”

The system based on formosa must be able to see the reliable heredity – they transmit the characteristics acquired from one generation to another – perhaps in conjunction with one of the other systems that are evaluated.

The six-year timing is ambitious, said Griffiths, who is optimistic the project will be able to “demonstrate Darwin’s rudimentary evolution.” As a minimum that involved a system that can change between two hereditary states in different environments, analogous to the famous peppered moth whose wings are white in clean environments and black when it lives in polluted places with dark surfaces.

Sijbren Otto, professor of systems chemistry at the University of Groningen and another member of the MiniLife team, said that their primary motivation was “fascination with the nature and origin of life. Although molecules that we develop will probably not be the ones from which life began on prebiotic Earth 3.8 billion years ago, the mechanisms we hope to uncover will be very relevant to understanding what happened then.”

Last month, an international group of researchers warned of “unprecedented risks” posed by another area of ​​synthetic biology. They said “mirror life” — engineered bacteria that are structural reflections of natural microbes — could break through the defenses of people, other animals and plants.

Asked about the safety of the MiniLife project, Otto said his creations were “extremely unlikely to have any viability outside of highly controlled laboratory conditions” and posed no risk to the public.

However, the team is working with experts to develop an ethical framework for the research. “Now is the time to think much further ahead about where research is likely to lead,” Otto said.