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From: mkkuhner@codon2.berkeley.edu (Mary K. Kuhner;335 Mulford)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Creating life
Keywords: Life
Message-ID: <1989Oct31.034851.24494@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 89 03:48:51 GMT
References: <2461@umbc3.UMBC.EDU>
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Reply-To: mkkuhner@codon2.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Mary K. Kuhner)
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In article <2461@umbc3.UMBC.EDU> cs225202@umbc5.umbc.edu.UUCP (Sang J. Moon) writes:
>Just a thought... I know that the basic building blocks of DNA can be now
>created from inorganic molecules, but can biologists use these building blocks
>to create viable DNA which will cbecome an actual organism?

It depends on whether you consider a virus alive.  A small virus
could probably be sythesized quite readily.  Cells, however, have
much more to them than DNA.  

My favorite experiment showing the complexity of non-DNA information
in the cell was done with a protozoan which is covered with cilia,
all lined up the same way.  Very precise microsurgery was used to
cut a strip off of the cell wall and put it back in reverse.
Somehow the cell survives this, and ends up with a row of backwards
cilia.  All descendents of that cell have a similar row, because
the old cell's cilia are used as templates for the new arrangement.

We are a long way from being able to put together a cell from scratch.

Mary Kuhner
mkkuhner@enzyme.berkeley.edu