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Evolutionary biologist Eörs Szathmáry, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, co-authored, among others, with John Maynard Smith A great step forward in evolution With this book, he, together with three foreign researchers, won the most prestigious tender of the European Research Council and the associated 13 million euros. Their goal was to prove that it is possible to create life in laboratory conditions starting from chemical molecules within six years.
Szathmáry’s three other colleagues are also top researchers, molecular biologist Andrew Griffith, who developed the molecular compartmentalization technology, which allows him to create very small, stable droplets that can be divided into two parts at the right moment. The team is also strengthened by two chemists, Sijbren Otto and Gonen Ashkenasy, who work on the construction of virtual and real reaction systems.
Tiny life
Their “MiniLife” project will be successful if the microspheres swim, grow and divide in a tank filled with nutrient solution. This will be a unique system that has not existed so far, on which they will be able to study evolutionary processes, a system that can adapt to perform useful tasks, and the chemical solutions it “selects” will be easy to follow.
Szathmáry said the idea for the project was based on Tibor Gánti’s ideas because, despite a long-standing interest in what life is and how it differs from inanimate natural objects, Tibor Gánti came up with the best way to approach the problem.
Back in the 1970s, Ganti published his “chemoton” theory, in which he explained that every simple living system requires three components.
- Metabolic components,
- Make sure the inherited part,
- and containment systems.
The latter prevents the components from dispersing.
Eörsék Szathmáry’s great idea was that, as a first step, they would try to create a system that would meet the living standards set by Tibor Gánti. As Szathmáry puts it:
The subsystems must function as a unified whole. These are Autocatalytic systems, that is, they catalyze their own formation, are always present at the root of biological reproduction.
MiniLife was created to do just as bacteria do: take in material, inherit, and divide. If this happens, it would prove that living systems are based on chemistry.
hurry up Sasmarie Theoretical researchers and founders, but this work is far from theoretical, the goal is precisely to make the creation of simple organisms work in a flask through chemical connections. It is not theoretical chemistry, but “tangible”, according to their hopes, it will be spheres of 100 nanometers in size.
But why did it take so many euros and six years?
As Eörs Szathmáry puts it:
You have to find itComponents, it worksto ensure that no subsystem proliferates. What matters is the true chemical reaction and organize Appear and thus be born The first artificial life system.
They are starting now because “science and certain areas of chemistry in general have just reached the point where we can achieve it technologically, and we currently understand enough about autocatalytic systems that that’s enough.”
Chemical analysis methods, i.e. chemical diagnostics, are needed and these have been greatly developed in recent years. Artificial intelligence machine learning is also used when computer simulations examine how subsystems of different masses work together.
Sassmarie added:
What matters is meYou should have several working examples of such subsystemsnIn k, it is unknown from the autocatalytic systemWe still have a lot, but we strive to have more.I work in chemistry. What generative chemistry does is try to predict how different molecules will react based on their properties in a computer model, creating a large chemical network with many components and reactions.
They believe that the theory can predict some promising things about autocatalytic systems, which can then be tested in practice. But he stressed that this is not the study of the origin of life, but the production of artificial life systems, whose components are not necessarily realistic from the perspective of the origin of life history. In MiniLife, they generally do not use materials from today’s Earth life, because it is easier to achieve the goal using these composite families.
Is this research relevant to potential extraterrestrial life? Sassmarie’s response is that Ganti’s concept has an abstract organizing principle in function, and I would now like to illustrate its operation. “Abstract means that if there is life somewhere else, maybe not on Earth, and it’s not based on our chemistry, it could still be organized in this way.”
That is, according to the principles of metabolic processes, restriction systems, genetic systems. The evolutionary biologist added that large moons such as Europa, Titan, Enceladus have organic matter and a lot of water, and it would be a big deal if we could find life on these moons, because they could have emerged through independent evolution. “I wonder what chemical solutions or genetic codes they might contain? We still need to study the atmospheres of distant planets, and we are getting closer and closer to them. If the atmosphere of a planet many light years away is strange and suspicious, then there may even be life there.”
(Cover photo: Eörs Szathmáry, 2 July 2018. Photo: János Bődey / Index)
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