Group items tagged

The International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL) is a democratic, international, professional society dedicated to promoting scientific research and education relating to artificial life, including sponsoring conferences, publishing scientific journals, and maintaining web sites related to artificial life.

It's that time of the month again. Yes: it's time for Life-form of the Month. In case you've forgotten, this coming Saturday is International Day for Biological Diversity, a day of celebrations and parties to appreciate the other occupants of the planet. So if you do nothing else this weekend, drink a toast to "Other Life-forms!" In honor of this event, my nomination for Life-form of the Month: May is a group of abundant and fascinating beings that are undeservedly obscure: the archaea.

Life must have begun with a simple molecule that could reproduce itself - and now we think we know how to make one

http://www.ted.com In his lab, Martin Hanczyc makes "protocells," experimental blobs of chemicals that behave like living cells. His work demonstrates how life might have first occurred on Earth ... and perhaps elsewhere too.

"The Open Tree of Life project (OpenTree) is enabling a community-assembled tree of life by synthesizing the wealth of phylogenetic data published / being published by the scientific community and providing the means to update and refine the draft tree."

"Oxygen may not be the staple of modern complex life that scientists once thought. Until now, the only life forms known to live exclusively in anoxic conditions were viruses, bacteria and Archaea. But in a new study, scientists have discovered three new multicellular marine species that appear to have never lived in aerobic conditions, and never metabolized oxygen. "

ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2011) - Certain molecules do exist in two forms which are symmetrical mirror images of each other: they are known as chiral molecules. On Earth, the chiral molecules of life, especially amino acids and sugars, exist in only one form, either left-handed or right-handed. Why is it that life has initially chosen one form over the other?

Organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the universe, Prof. Sun Kwok and Dr. Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong have discovered, suggesting that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space even when no life forms are present. The organic substance they found contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components that are so complex, their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum. Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of organic matter was thought to arise only from living organisms. Unidentified radiation from the universe The researchers investigated an unsolved phenomenon: a set of infrared emissions detected in stars, interstellar space, and galaxies, known as "Unidentified Infrared Emission features." From observations taken by the Infrared Space Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, Kwok and Zhang showed that the astronomical spectra have chemical structures that are much more complex that previously thought. By analyzing spectra of star dust formed in exploding stars called novae, they show that stars are making these complex organic compounds on extremely short time scales of weeks, and ejecting it into the general interstellar space, the region between stars. "Our work has shown that stars have no problem making complex organic compounds under near-vacuum conditions," says Kwok. "Theoretically, this is impossible, but observationally we can see it happening." Most interestingly, this organic star dust is similar in structure to complex organic compounds found in meteorites. Since meteorites are remnants of the early Solar System, the findings raise the possibility that stars enriched the early Solar System with organic compounds. The early Earth was subjected to severe bombardments by comets and asteroids, which potentially could have carried organic star dust. Whether these delivered organic compounds played any role in the development of l

If there is organic life deep under the ice on Europa, why would we need to disturb it at all? Potential source of unknown viruses etc. Risks of releasing something are low I guess, but the assumption that whatever may be there needs Earth-like conditions to survive and multiply is dangerous.

"THE precursor of life may have learned how to copy itself thanks to simple convection at the bottom of the ocean. Lab experiments reveal how DNA replication could have occurred in tiny pores around undersea vents." "To test this theory, Mast and Braun put these ingredients into tubes 1.5 millimetres long. They used a laser to heat one side of the water and create thermal convection. Sure enough, they found that the DNA doubled every 50 seconds (Physical Review Letters, vol 104, p 188102)."

Now, why would these theologians find fault with the idea of extending human life? The message we're used to hearing from them is that life is sacred. I guess it is sacred only so long as you don't have too much of it.

Further discussion on how life on earth may have originated.

Jane McGonigal: The game that can give you 10 extra years of life

William Gunn The Top 10 papers in Biological Sciences by Mendeley readership. With the Mendeley for Life Scientists webinar coming up on Thursday, I thought I would take a look at the readership stats for Biological Sciences. Biological Sciences has long been our biggest discipline, and having done my doctoral work in the Life Sciences, I knew this would be interesting. Overall, researchers in bioinformatics contributed most strongly to the most read papers, along with the older disciplines of micro- and molecular biology. Regardless of discipline, however, it's clear that the days of toiling away in isolation to thoroughly study one gene are over. Today, it's all about huge consortia and massive data. Here's what I found

"Cellendes continously expands the 3-D Life product line to provide an innovative and increasingly comprehensive technology for a broad range of applications in 3-D cell culture. Cellendes seeks collaborations with academic and industrial partners to explore and develop the use of the 3-D Life technology in complex cell-based assays and tissue models for drug screening as well as in biomedical engineering. Cellendes was founded in 2009 by Dr. Brigitte Angres and Dr. Helmut Wurst. Cellendes is a spinoff company of the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tübingen."

"Life Science Technologist Pieter van Boheemen works as a project developer for Waag Society's Open Wetlab. Pieter is a Life Science Technologist. In his work he mixes his Genomics degree with lots of experience in IT. He gets his every day inspiration from working with great people, then do cool stuff to maximize everyones motivation and performance"

A massive analysis of almost every bacterial genome sequenced to date suggests a new shape for the tree of life. digg_url

December 9th, 02005 - Sam Harris"The View From The End Of The World"This is an audio only presentation. This talk took place in the Conference Center Golden Gate Room, San Francisco. Quote: With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow audience into the core of one of the crucial issues of our time: What makes some religions lethal? How do they employ aggressive irrationality to justify threatening and controlling non-believers as well as believers? What should be our response? Harris began with Christianity. In the US, Christians use irrational arguments about a soul in the 150 cells of a 3-day old human embryo to block stem cell research that might alleviate the suffering of millions. In Africa, Catholic doctrine uses tortured logic to actively discourage the use of condoms in countries ravaged by AIDS. "This is genocidal stupidity," Harris said. Faith trumps rational argument. Common-sense ethical intuition is blinded by religious metaphysics. In the US, 22% of the population are CERTAIN that Jesus is coming back in the next 50 years, and another 22% think that it's likely. The good news of Christ's return, though, can only occur following desperately bad news. Mushroom clouds would be welcomed. "End time thinking," Harris said, "is fundamentally hostile to creating a sustainable future." Harris was particularly critical of religious moderates who give cover to the fundamentalists by not challenging them. The moderates say that all is justified because religion gives people meaning in their life. "But what would they say to a guy who believes there's a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in his backyard? The guy digs out there every Sunday with his family, cherishing the meaningthe quest gives them." "I've read the books," Harris said. "God is not a moderate." The Bible gives strict instructions to kill various kinds of sinners, and their relatives, and on occasion their entire towns. Yet slavery is challenged nowhere in the New or

All of which could lend credence to the suggestion of biochemist Lawrence Henderson in 1913 that water is peculiarly favourable to the evolution of life. In the introduction to a 1958 edition of Henderson's book, Wald wrote 'we now believe that life… must arise inevitably wherever it can, given enough time.' But perhaps what it needs is not so much enough time, but the right amount of heat.