🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2461@umbc3.UMBC.EDU> cs225202@umbc5.umbc.edu.UUCP (Sang J. Moon) writes:
>Just a thought... I know that the basic building blocks of DNA can be now
>created from inorganic molecules, but can biologists use these building blocks
>to create viable DNA which will cbecome an actual organism?

It depends on whether you consider a virus alive.  A small virus
could probably be sythesized quite readily.  Cells, however, have
much more to them than DNA.  

My favorite experiment showing the complexity of non-DNA information
in the cell was done with a protozoan which is covered with cilia,
all lined up the same way.  Very precise microsurgery was used to
cut a strip off of the cell wall and put it back in reverse.
Somehow the cell survives this, and ends up with a row of backwards
cilia.  All descendents of that cell have a similar row, because
the old cell's cilia are used as templates for the new arrangement.

We are a long way from being able to put together a cell from scratch.

Mary Kuhner
mkkuhner@enzyme.berkeley.edu