Artificial Life?

Yeh? Well, get your own dirt Instapundit links a story about researchers who are making "progress toward artificial life"—what was once called "creating life in a test tube." However, key info from the article reveals that they are close to building an "erector set" version of life, not even approaching creation at all: The soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white. The cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its genetic material. This essence of life contains ready-made much of the biological machinery needed to make proteins; the researchers also added an enzyme from a virus to allow the vesicle to translate DNA code. When they added genes, the cell fluid started to make proteins, just like a normal cell would. Yeh, well, if they want to create a lil life on their own, they ought to get their own dirt first. This is more akin to someone being proud of baking cookies they bought at WallyWorld. Sure, they opened the package and put 'em in the cookie jar. Big whoopie.