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From: toms@ncifcrf.gov (Tom Schneider)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Creating life
Keywords: Life
Message-ID: <1380@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>
Date: 3 Nov 89 17:29:41 GMT
References: <2461@umbc3.UMBC.EDU> <4516@utastro.UUCP> <2189@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> <19690@brunix.UUCP> <13488@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Reply-To: toms@ncifcrf.gov (Tom Schneider)
Organization: National Cancer Institute, Frederick
Lines: 21

The question has been raised as to whether we can build life from scratch with
our current knowledge and technology.  The answer is that we certainly have the
technology, but we don't have the knowledge of how to use it.  It's as if we
had matches and dry paper, but didn't know what to do to get the fire going.
But once somebody gets it going, how can we know that they really succeeded and
didn't cheat?  Well, all living organisms on this planet use chiral molecules,
so amino acids come in D and L forms which are mirror images of each other
(stereoisomers) but living things use the L form except in rare cases.
Likewise B form DNA, the kind used predominantly in cells, is a right handed
helix.  (Left handed DNA has a different structure.)  So a proof that we really
can build living things from scratch is to construct a cell that is an entire
mirror image of cells that now exist!

Let's put some teeth into that!  I promise to pay $1000 to anyone who can
construct a completely reversed (mirror image) cell!

  Tom Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
  Frederick, Maryland  21701-1013
  toms@ncifcrf.gov