Creating inorganic life?

Scientists in Scotland are undertaking pioneering research to create life from inorganic chemicals.

All life on earth is based on organic biology - in the form of carbon compounds - but the inorganic world is considered to be inanimate.

A team from Glasgow University has demonstrated a new way of making inorganic chemical cells.

The aim is to create self-replicating, evolving inorganic cells which could be used in medicine and chemistry.

The project is being led by Professor Lee Cronin from the university's College of Science and Engineering.

Useful applications

 

He said: "What we are trying do is create self-replicating, evolving, inorganic cells that would essentially be alive. You could call it inorganic biology." 

Professor Cronin's team has demonstrated a new way of creating inorganic chemical cells.

These can be compartmentalised by creating internal membranes that control the passage of materials and energy through them, meaning several chemical processes can be isolated within the same cell - just like biological cells.

Researchers say the cells, which can also store electricity, could potentially be used in all sorts of applications in medicine, as sensors or to confine chemical reactions. 

The research is part of a project by Prof Cronin to demonstrate that inorganic chemical compounds are capable of self-replicating and evolving - just as organic, biological carbon-based cells do.

Prof Cronin believes that creating inorganic life it is entirely feasible.

He added: "The grand aim is to construct complex chemical cells with life-like properties that could help us understand how life emerged and also to use this approach to define a new technology based upon evolution in the material world - a kind of inorganic living technology. 

"Bacteria are essentially single-cell micro-organisms made from organic chemicals, so why can't we make micro-organisms from inorganic chemicals and allow them to evolve? 

"If successful this would give us some incredible insights into evolution and show that it's not just a biological process. It would also mean that we would have proven that non carbon-based life could exist and totally redefine our ideas of design."

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From Spider Silk Artificial Skin

After 35 days of culturing, nearly 98 percent of the cells were detected as being vital (green), with dead cells (red) rarely observed

The secret to creating artificial skin might be spider silk, researchers now suggest.
Skin grafts are vital for treating burn victims and other patients. For instance, chronic wounds such as bedsores in hospitalized patients afflict 6.5 million in the United States alone for estimated costs of $25 billion annually.

Instead of using skin from a body for a graft, scientists are investigating artificial skin. Ideally such a graft would be of a material tolerated by the body, have skin cells embedded within it to replace lost tissue, degrade safely over time as the new skin grows in and be strong enough to withstand all the rigors ordinary skin experiences. Materials investigated until now did not seem strong enough for the task, said tissue engineer Hanna Wendt at Medical School Hannover in Germany.

Now Wendt and her colleagues suggest silk might be up for the job.
Spider silk is the toughest known natural material. Moreover, there is abody of folklore dating back at least 2,000 years regarding the potential medical value of webs — for instance, in fighting infections, stemming bleeding, healing wounds and serving as artificial ligaments.

The extraordinary strength and stretchiness of spider silk "are important factors for easy handling and transfer of many kinds of implants," Wendt said. In addition, unlike silk from silkworms, that from spiders apparently does not trigger the body's rejection reactions.

 On the spider-silk meshes, the team cultivated the skin cells into tissues resembling epidermis, the skin's outermost layer. 


To test spider silk's usefulness, first Wendt and her colleagues essentially milked golden silk orb-weaver spiders by stroking their silk glands and spooling up the silk fibers that came out. They next wove meshes from this silk onto steel frames.

The researchers found that human skin cells placed on these meshes could flourish, given proper nurturing with nutrients, warmth and air. They were able to cultivate the two main skin cell types, keratinocytes and fibroblasts, into tissue-like patterns resembling epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, and dermis, the layer of living tissue below the epidermis that contains blood capillaries, nerve endings, sweat glands, hair follicles and other structures.

"It was impressive to observe how human cells use spider silk," Wendt told LiveScience.
Currently, harvesting large amounts of spider silk for industrial standards is not practical. "I think in the long term, for widespread daily clinical use, synthetic silk fibers providing the same mechanical- and cell culture- properties will be needed," Wendt said. Currently, many research groups are investigating ways to grow synthetic spider silk.

The first (A) and fourth (B) day after seeding the mesh frame, the researchers found the skin cells spread from the corners into the meshes, reaching one another within a week.

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Early Life Crippled By Natural Nukes

Ancient nuclear reactors buried in lake and shallow ocean sediments may have cooked early microbes, according to a new study. And radiation from the deposits could have delayed the onset of our modern-day, oxygen-rich atmosphere, and even had a hand in shaping the genetics of primordial life.

Natural nuclear reactors dating to 2 billion years ago have been found in Gabon, Africa. Though long since exhausted, scientists know from the unusually low quantity of the Uranium-235 isotope in the rock that they once went critical, and hosted a sustained fission reaction that went on for as long as two hundred thousand years.

A billion years earlier, such deposits could have been common, say Laurence Coogan and Jay Cullen of the University of Victoria. The first oxygen-producing bacteria colonized lakes and shallow seas, and likely created oxygen 'oases' in an otherwise nitrogen-dominated world.

"Oxygen oases would have been hot spots for uranium concentration," Cullen said, because oxygen dissolved in water would draw uranium out of rocks and sediments. "Back then, there was so much more 235U that a softball-sized chunk of uranium would be enough for it to go critical."

If the researchers are right, wherever there were oxygen-producing bacteria, there were also natural nuclear reactors. Radiation could have damaged the bugs' DNA, either directly from the reactors or as leftover atoms of radioactive strontium (Sr) and iodine (I) made their way into the food chain.

 Igneous rocks on Iceland. Ancient nuclear reactors buried in lake and shallow ocean sediments may have cooked early microbes, according to a new study. (image right)

In short, organisms that produced oxygen 3 billion years ago were shooting themselves in the foot by spawning toxic nuclear reactors. That may explain why it wasn't until around 2.3 billion years ago that oxygen finally started building up in the atmosphere. By then, Cullen said, most of the readily available nuclear fuel was used up.

However, it's also possible the reactors had a positive effect on early life.

"Modern cyanobacteria are quite good at dealing with ionizing radiation," Cullen said. "The question you have to     ask is, 'Why?' Well, maybe there was some selective pressure back then that forced them to develop that resistance."

The researchers' work was published in the latest issue of the journal GSA Today.

Radiation is harmful because it causes uncontrolled mutations in organisms' DNA. But mutation is also the engine of evolution. Cullen said it's possible that natural nuclear reactors may have molded the genetic makeup of early life forms. 

"There is no doubt that sources of radiation from geology, the sun, or cosmic rays will definitely cause mutation, and they were almost certainly all higher back then," Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University said.

One way to test that model might be to test ancient rocks for concentrations of lead (Pb) that would indicate whether or not natural nuclear reactors were common in antiquity.

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