Evoledge - Evolve Your Knowledge With Evoledge&trade

Section 1 MOAM to LUCUS How did life start? Section 2 Cellular Modeling Are viruses alive? Are models alive? Section 3 Artificial Cells Neural computers Cell-based computer Should genetically modified food be labeled? Why not? If it's better for everyone, then don't we want to publicize this fact.

Section 1 MOAM to LUCAS How did life start on earth? It is generally believed that all life on earth shares a common ancestry with a set of Last Universal Common Ancestors (LUCAS) that lived on earth around 4 billion years ago. LUCAS is believed to have shared all of the common features that all life on earth shares today. We don't know the genetic makeup of LUCAS, nor do we know how LUCAS evolved from MOAM, the Mother Of All Mothers, the initial replicating life form on Earth that appears to have beaten huge odds against its existence to give rise to all life forms that exist today. Section 2 Cellular Modeling The cell is the unit of life. There was arguably no life before cells and all life is made of cells. Some may say viruses are living, but not without cells they aren't. Viruses are like a program without a computer to execute it. The information encoded in a virus's genetic code is only interpretable by the genetic decoding machinery in the cell, or is it? What if there existed a detailed software model of the cell and the genetic information of the virus was injected into the model of the cell. Would the virus be alive? Would the cell model be alive? What if the computer used to run the software program was a biological computer made out of organic molecules, but completely artificial and unable to replicate on its own? Would this change anything? Section 3 Biological Computing using Artificial Cells It is possible to create a simple biological computer (Biological Computer Born - 1999). Current silicon-based microprocessors are now built from transistors with feature sizes less than 90 nm. Rather than build a computer out of a network of neurons, what if we built a computer out of a network of interacting ribozymes and enzymes? Basically, this would be like building an artificial cell tailor to the task of linking up with its neighboring artificial cells to perform computations. Is this possible? It seems so given all the life around us. Can it be accomplished in less than 4 billion years? Well, that's a different question.