Today’s New Reason To Believe

Posted by Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana, Ph.D.

Scientists One Step Closer to Artificial Life and the Best Case for ID

Mary Shelley’s famous Gothic horror story presents a fascinating character: Victor Frankenstein. As a burgeoning scientist, Victor becomes obsessed with discovering the “principle” that distinguishes life from inanimate matter. After many long hours of study and laboratory work he uncovers “the cause of generation and life,” and becomes “capable of bestowing animation on lifeless matter.”

Frankenstein exercises his newfound ability by bringing a humanoid monster to life, only to abandon it in disgust. Victor’s moral failings lead to several tragic deaths at the hands of his creature, including those of his brother, his best friend, and, later, his wife on their wedding night. Even though the scientist and the creation are somewhat sympathetic figures, it’s not clear who’s the true monster—Victor, the creature, or both.

If there is a real life Frankenstein, he might very well be Craig Venter.

Venter stands as perhaps one of the most important scientists in the last decade or so. (In 2008, Time magazine voted him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.) As a major player in the emergence of the science of genomics, he is a scientific maverick who thinks big and has little patience for the red tape and bureaucracy that characterize many scientific programs. And like Victor, he is a polarizing figure, much admired and much hated by people within and outside the scientific community.

Recently, Venter founded a company called Synthetic Genomics. As with Shelley’s protagonist, Venter wants to create life in the laboratory. The new company is devoted to creating artificial, nonnatural life microbes that have commercial utility, particularly for the production of ethanol, hydrogen, and other forms of renewable energy. Once again, Venter has generated a mixture of excitement and horror among the scientific community, and the public at large.

Scientists like Venter who pursue the creation of artificial and synthetic life claim that these novel life-forms will benefit humanity. If they accomplish the desired breakthrough, it could go a long way toward resolving the energy and climate crises.

The very real prospect of scientists creating life in the lab raises all sorts of theological questions. Should human beings “play God”? Some conservative Christians worry that the genesis of novel life-forms by human hands eliminates the need for a Creator by substantiating the evolutionary paradigm. Many theists and atheists, alike, believe that if scientists can create life in the lab, then there is nothing special about any life. Therefore, the origin-of-life could have easily taken place on the early Earth without God’s necessary involvement.

The latest work by Venter’s team stands as another milestone in the quest to create an artificial life-form in the lab. Ironically, instead of supporting an evolutionary origin of life, this research demonstrates that life’s beginnings and transformation cannot happen apart from the work of an intelligent agent.

This week I will discuss the progress Venter and his team at Synthetic Genomics have made toward achieving their goal. In the next couple of weeks I’ll describe the details of their most recent accomplishment and will eventually explore the implications of this work for the intelligent design (creation)/evolution controversy.

The Path to Artificial Life

Venter and his coworkers became interested in creating artificial life as an outgrowth of another project. Initially, they were interested in determining the minimum genome for life. The term “genome” refers to an organism’s entire hereditary information, stored in the nucleotide sequences of DNA. The information housed in genomes exists in units called genes. These units contain the information that the cell’s machinery uses to make proteins.

Proteins take part in virtually every biochemical process and play critical roles in nearly every cell structure. Cataloging the number and types of proteins present in an organism gives biochemists important insight into its structures and operations. Venter’s team hopes that identifying the minimum genome will provide them with an understanding of life at its most fundamental level.

In their attempts to reach that target, Venter’s group has focused attention on a bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. This microbe has one of the smallest, if not the smallest, genome known to scientists. M. genitalium parasitizes the human genital and respiratory tracts. Its genome possesses about 480 gene products. Because its genome is so extensively pared-down, it’s ideally suited as a model system to determine the absolutely indispensable requirements for life—the “non-negotiable” biochemical systems that must be present for an entity to be recognized as a form of life.

The researchers reasoned that it is quite likely that the bare essential genome is much smaller than 480 gene products. It turns out that a significant fraction of this parasite’s genome is dedicated to mediating interactions between the parasite and its host and can be considered as nonessential to a strictly minimal life-form.

Using an experimental approach, Venter’s team worked to ascertain the minimum number of genes needed for life. Their protocols involved both the random and systematic mutation of M. genitalium genes to determine those that are indispensable for life. (Biochemists refer to these procedures as knock-out experiments.) If a gene is nonessential, M. genitalium will still grow after the gene is mutated.

Once the essential or minimum gene has been determined via the knock-out experiments, the scientists hope to confirm their result by preparing a synthetic minimal genome and introducing it into a cell to see if the cell with the transplanted genome grows. They realized that in the process of identifying the minimum genome, they came just a few short steps away from making artificial life in the lab.

Steps to Creating Artificial Life

Venter and collaborators’ approach to creating an artificial life-form is called a top-down strategy. It involves starting with a naturally occurring microbe and stripping it down to its bare genetic and biochemical essence, and then modifying it by adding nonnative genes to the minimal genome to generate a nonnatural form of life.

The major stages in this effort involve:

by Jeff Zweerink

I love mountains! Most of my favorite trips from childhood (and adulthood) involved mountains–backpacking in Bridger Wilderness Wyoming; rafting the Arkansas River through Brown’s Canyon, Colorado; enjoying the ski slopes of Monarch Pass in the Colorado Rockies. All of these destinations, including my most recent excursion to the Grand Tetons (just south of Yellowstone National Park), feature mountain peaks reaching well over 12,000 feet above sea level.

Colter Bay in the Grand Tetons.

Recent research shows that for half of Earth’s history such vistas did not exist. The processes that formed the Earth left it with a surface and interior much hotter than today. Collisions during the late heavy bombardment maintained this hellish state. Extreme heat makes most materials less rigid and sturdy. Consequently, the rocky substance that comprises Earth’s crust was too weak to permit the formation of mountains any larger than about 7,500 feet. Over time, Earth radiated enough heat away that the crust grew much stronger. Between 2.8 and 2.5 billion years ago, it became strong enough to support mountains taller than 7,500 feet.

This dating is significant because of how tall mountains affected Earth’s atmosphere and geochemistry. Around this same time, our planet’s atmosphere changed to a state containing a permanent oxygen component (although initially only a few percent of present levels). Yet the geological record indicates that up to 300 million years elapsed between the time when oxygen-producing bacteria came into existence and when the permanent oxygen component appeared. The simultaneous formation of tall mountains and this atmospheric constituent may help explain this gap.

As I wrote in the January 2009 issue of our new magazine, New Reasons to Believe, the abundance or lack of nutrients affects the activity of oxygen-producing bacteria. In particular, the lack of the element molybdenum severely limits bacterial activity. The erosion of continental crust provides the primary source of this element, and tall mountains greatly facilitate erosion. The increase of molybdenum in the geological record coincides with the time that the crust became strong enough to support mountains above 7,500 feet. Subsequently, the oxygen content of the atmosphere increased to the current 20 percent level that complex life like human beings requires.

Genesis 1 describes a process where God transformed an initially uninhabitable, water-covered world to an environment teeming with life. One overriding purpose of this transformation is to provide an abundant, beautiful place for human beings to reside. The intricate interaction of biological (oxygen-producing bacteria), astronomical (Earth radiating heat away into space), geological (plate tectonics building tall mountains), and chemical (erosion of nutrients like molybdenum) processes fits perfectly with the careful, purposeful progression Genesis 1 describes.

Kenneth Richard Samples

Historic Christianity is unique among the religions of the world for its explicit emphasis upon both the origin and destiny of humanity. The Christian faith has much to say about important past events, but it also projects forward concerning critical future things.

In parts two and three of this series I described what might be called “Mere Christian Eschatology.” While important differences are apparent concerning the final events of human history, nevertheless all historical Christian theological traditions affirm essential core orthodoxy when it comes to eschatology (study of “last things”). Secondary differences among believers should always be understood within the context of the overwhelming areas of common agreement.

Still, some of the sharpest differences Christians have amongst themselves come down to eschatology.

Three Major Eschatological Differences

1. Understanding of the Bible’s Apocalyptic Literature

Apocalyptic writings are a genre of literature that is believed to present revelations of the end of the world in deeply symbolic language. Through the centuries Christendom has been divided over just how to understand the Bible’s apocalyptic, or prophetic, literature (primarily Daniel and Revelation).

Today, many biblical scholars remain in disagreement over interpretations of these books. They interpret the Book of Revelation through various approaches (preterist, historicist, idealist, futurist) that contribute to eschatological differences. Many scholars consider the Bible’s apocalyptic elements to be the most challenging and difficult areas to understand.

Interpretive Models of Revelation:

2. Relationship between Israel and the Church

One of the most important areas of biblical study has to do with the question of how the Old Testament (OT) relates to the New Testament (NT). Some conservative evangelical traditions see great continuity between the testaments. However, others emphasize their apparent discontinuity.

An area that directly relates to eschatology is the question of Israel and the Christian church. Is it appropriate to make a distinction between these two groups? Some assert that there is no distinction between Israel and the church. For them, the church is the new Israel. For those who embrace the historic eschatological positions of amillennialism and postmillennialism (both to be discussed in later articles) the church is designated as spiritual Israel.

On the other hand, advocates of premillennialism (also to be discussed) mark an important distinction between Israel and the church. Historic premillennialists make a subtle distinction (between a literal Israel and a spiritual one), whereas with dispensational premillennialists the distinction is much more pronounced. Dispensational theology has historically made a complete distinction between the two groups and even proposed two individual programs (one for Israel and another for the church).

Determining the proper relationship between the OT people of Israel and the NT church remains an area of critical difference in eschatology.

The next article will discuss one more area in which Christians find major differences in eschatology.

For an introduction to the topic of general eschatology, see Donald G. Bloesch, The Last Things and George Eldon Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John.