Below is a link to a past article that highlights just how elaborate the strategy has to be to generate artificial cells.

• “The Blueprint for an Artificial Cell”

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Should humans play God?

This question has become more poignant in the last few years as biochemists, molecular biologists, and origin-of-life researchers make significant strides in their quest to create life in the lab. Attempts to produce artificial life fall under the purview of a new discipline called synthetic biology, a fusion of engineering and the life sciences.

One of synthetic biology’s goals is the design and manufacture of nonnatural life-forms—man-made constructs—unlike anything found in nature. Typically, those interested in creating these artificial organisms focus on engineering novel microbes (bacteria, yeast, etc.) or producing protocells, chemical supersystems that assume many, if not all, of the properties of life.

Among other benefits, these man-made life-forms could potentially provide huge technological advantages. Researchers envision synthetic microbes and protocells as bioreactors that could use inexpensive raw materials and solar energy to generate extremely valuable materials, like biomedicines, vaccines, biofuels, bioplastics, etc. These novel life-forms could also be used to clean up contaminants from the environment and find use in agricultural applications.

Despite such exciting possibilities, the creation of artificial life raises questions, some of a practical nature and others of a more philosophical and theological orientation.

• Will the creation of synthetic life-forms eliminate the need for a Creator? Will synthetic biology make it all the more reasonable to think that life emerged via chemical evolution?

• Is this type of work safe? If artificial cells “leak” from the lab will they cause a disaster of “biblical” proportions?

• Is it ethical to create artificial life?

• Are researchers “playing God”?

I find that many Christians summarily condemn this type of research without thoughtful deliberation. Others simply ignore it, as if by not paying attention to the work, it will “go away.” They bank on the notion that scientists won’t really be able to accomplish their goals. But, as I discuss in my book Creating Life in the Lab, it is just a matter of time before scientists achieve success. In fact, I anticipate that in the next decade researchers will succeed in creating a variety of forms of artificial life, using a number of different approaches.

Whether we like it or not, scientists will create life in the lab. Christians need to wrestle with the questions posed by this endeavor and be a part of the process. Most importantly, we need to develop a framework to help us think through these issues—we need a theology for synthetic biology.

Before I propose such a theology, I would like to address several questions that people typically ask about synthetic biology. My responses serve as an introduction to this new discipline and provide a status report of progress to date.

Can scientists really create life in the lab?

This question comes up whenever I talk about advances in synthetic biology. Many Christians and non-Christians, alike, are skeptical about scientists’ ability to create even the simplest life. In part, this skepticism is fueled by the increasing recognition that even in its most minimal form, life displays astounding complexity.¹ Many wonder how scientists could ever replicate such intricacy and elegance?

This is not an unreasonable question. But the fact remains that scientists understand enough about how life’s structure and basic level functions to parlay that insight into genuine advances in synthetic biology.

What have synthetic biologists actually accomplished?

When scientists try to create life in the lab, they employ one of two approaches: the top-down or bottom-up. The top-down strategy involves re-engineering existing microbes (sometimes in radical ways) to generate artificial life. The bottom-up approach focuses on combining relatively simple chemicals into increasingly complex super-chemical systems that assume the properties common to life on Earth.

To date, the greatest progress toward creating artificial life is due to the top-down approach. However, researchers working with the bottom-up method have also made significant advances.² In the next decade, I believe researchers employing both approaches will have success in making artificial cells and life-like protocells, respectively.

Does the creation of life in the lab eliminate the need for a Creator?

Many Christians view the attempt to create life in the lab as a thoroughly atheistic endeavor. This is because many synthetic biologists and origin-of-life researchers assert that if we can make life in the lab, it will mean life is not special. According to this view, life is merely a physicochemical system. Therefore, we can, in principle, replicate this chemistry and physics in the lab. If this is the case, then a Creator is not needed to explain life’s genesis. Without the need for a Creator, it makes it all the more likely that life emerged on early Earth (or elsewhere) via chemical evolutionary processes.

However, as I demonstrate in Creating Life in the Lab, work in synthetic biology, whether from the bottom-up or top-down, actually leads to the opposite conclusion.

Whether it’s on early Earth or in the lab, life cannot come from non-life or be significantly transformed from one form into another without the direct involvement of intelligent agency. The generation of artificial cells and protocells requires the work of highly trained scientists who rely on several hundred years of scientific advance. In the process, these researchers develop sophisticated strategies and elaborate protocols. These steps are executed carefully in the laboratory, in many instances, with highly sophisticated laboratory instrumentation. In other words, artificial life is intelligently designed.³

The Christian faith has nothing to fear from advances in synthetic biology. God is more necessary than ever before in order to explain the origin of life. But should human beings engage in the creation of artificial life at all? Is it safe? If it is safe, is this an activity that Christians should support? Should we play God?

In part 2, I will develop a theology for synthetic biology to help make sense of these concerns.

Endnotes:

1. See these articles for more details on life’s complexity:  “Biochemists Ask, ‘How Low Can Life Go?’”, “More Complex than Imagined, Part 1 (of 2),” and “More Complex than Imagined, Part 2 (of 2).”

2. Here are two articles that give a good sense of the progress in the quest to make artificial cells: “The Celebrity of Artificial Life” and “Artificial Life: Ready or Not Here It Comes.”

3. See note 2 for articles in support of this conclusion.

• “Young-Earth Issues: Is the Big Bang Dead?”

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The ability of a model’s predictions to match observations helps scientists evaluate that model’s validity. Even if most of the data match, a few key discrepancies between predictions and measurements can result in the model being discarded. On the other hand, new data that resolves a prior discrepancy can boost scientists’ confidence in the model. A new measurement of primitive gas clouds provides such a boost for big bang cosmology.

The temperatures and densities in the universe moments after the big bang prevented the formation of even protons, the most basic building blocks of matter. Shortly after the universe cooled past the point where protons could exist, it entered a period where nuclei larger than a single proton formed. Big bang models predict the existence of specific amounts of hydrogen, deuterium (hydrogen with one neutron), helium, and lithium four minutes after the big bang. However, the formation of stars 200 million years later started changing the ratio of these elements. In order to directly measure these primordial abundances, astronomers must find gas clouds uncontaminated by star remains.

Researchers’ initial searches turned up only clouds with metal abundances roughly one thousandth that of the Sun. While these clouds are extremely metal poor, they are still significantly contaminated. Now three scientists have reported observations of two gas clouds—seen as they were two billion years after the big bang—with no detectable metal content.¹

These clouds support big bang cosmology in two ways. First, the discovery of such pristine clouds verifies one step of the progression from the early hot, dense state after the big bang until numerous stars have formed and exploded. Second, the team measured the deuterium abundance in these pristine clouds, and the value matched predictions of big bang nucleosynthesis.

Big bang cosmology traces its roots to Einstein and Hubble’s work more than 80 years ago. The scientific discoveries over that time, including this observation of pristine gas clouds, continue to demonstrate that big bang cosmology remains the best tested and most parsimonious explanation of the universe in which we live. And it agrees well with the biblical description.

Endnotes:

1. Michele Fumagalli, John M. O’Meara, and J. Xavier Prochaska, “Detection of Pristine Gas Two Billion Years After the Big Bang,” Science 334 (December 2, 2011): 1245–49.

In the December 30, 2011 episode of Science News Flash I discuss not only these findings but also beavers’ substantial influence on Canada and America’s economic beginnings and on wetland ecosystems. Listen to find out why beaver populations are worth preserving.

• “Beavers Helped Build America’s Ground”

On the December 29, 2011 episode of Science News Flash, I discuss the data and the implications for the creation-evolution issue. Listen to find out why this extra digit corroborates convergence, a decidedly unevolutionary phenomenon.

• “Elephant’s Sixth ‘Toe’ Discovered”

• “More Accurate Measures of Creation: Shoring Up the Distance Ladder Method” by Hugh Ross
• “Measuring the Candle” by Dave Rogstad

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During my teenage years my father bought the family a .22-caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and then constructed a shooting range in the basement of our home. After some practice I was able to light a match from thirty feet away with that rifle. It was a different matter altogether, however, when I took the rifle outside and tried to duplicate the feat from a hundred feet away. I was not able to calibrate the telescopic sight with sufficient precision, nor could I hold the rifle steadily enough. Someone much more skilled in sharpshooting than I told me none of these difficulties would have mattered because neither my rifle nor my sight was powerful enough to accomplish the task regardless of skill.

Similarly, deficiencies exist in the tools astronomers developed for measuring distances and other cosmological properties. Although these devices can determine properties corresponding to look back times (light travel times) equal to 8 or 9 billion years, they prove inadequate for look back times equal to 12 to 13 billion light-years. For decades, astronomers have yearned to study the characteristics of the universe that existed 12 to 13 billion years ago, when the universe’s first stars and galaxies formed.

This early cosmic era is also the point at which models for the origin of the universe diverge. Alternate cosmological theories predict cosmic characteristics substantially different from those posited by the standard hot big bang inflationary creation model. The Bible uniquely predicted that standard model thousands of years before any astronomers even suggested the universe might manifest that model’s characteristics.¹ Thus, the ability to test, in detail, the properties of the universe during its early epochs has huge implications for establishing the validity of the Christian faith.

Measuring Recession Velocity and Distance

Precision cosmology and the testing of competing cosmological models depend on astronomers’ capacity to determine, as accurately as possible, how rapidly the universe was expanding at different epochs throughout its history. This capacity requires thousands of measurements of both the distance and the recession velocity of galaxies (the rate at which a particular galaxy is moving away from Earth) over the widest possible range of galaxy distances.

Obtaining recession velocities is straightforward. Astronomers simply measure the degree by which a galaxy’s spectral lines are shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Einstein’s theory of special relativity states that the faster a galaxy moves away from us relative to the velocity of light the greater the “redshift” of its spectral lines will be. Today, astronomers have instruments capable of determining a galaxy’s redshift and, hence, its recession velocity often to an accuracy of one part in a hundred thousand (to within five decimal point precision).

The real limitation to precision cosmology is determining how far away all the different galaxies are from Earth. Some advancement has been made in this area. New technology allows astronomers to link together radio telescopes separated from one another by thousands of miles. Astronomers can now measure direct geometrically determined distances (based on standard plane geometry theorems) to galaxies as far away as 163 million light-years.²

Using Standard Candles

Beyond that 163-million-light-year distance, astronomers depend upon “standard candles”—a particular class of astronomical bodies wherein all the bodies manifest the same intrinsic luminosity. With all the bodies being equally luminous, their apparent luminosities will depend on the inverse square distance law (a body X times more distant will be X² times dimmer). Astronomers measure the apparent luminosity of one of those bodies. They then compare it to the luminosity of another, much closer body in the same class for which an accurate direct geometric distance measurement exists. From this comparison, researchers can deduce the actual distance to the body that is farther away.

To date, the brightest astronomical bodies that serve as standard candles are Cepheid variable stars and type Ia supernovae. Cepheids are up to 100,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Using Cepheids, astronomers have determined accurate distance measures to galaxies as far away as 150 million light-years (look back times = 150 million years).

A single type Ia supernova at maximum brightness shines with as much light as 5 billion ordinary stars like the Sun. Consequently, they can be seen at great distances. The most distant ones that can provide reasonably accurate distance measurements reside at distances corresponding to look back times equal to 9 billion years.

In the late 1990s, measurements on about 50 type Ia supernovae at distances ranging from 1.9 to 7.0 billion light-years led to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. These measurements also revealed that dark energy (the physical factor responsible for the acceleration) is the dominant component of the universe.³

Dark energy’s capacity to accelerate cosmic expansion is proportional to the space surface of the universe. In a continually expanding universe the space surface increases as the universe grows older. Therefore, the accelerating effect due to dark energy becomes greater and greater as the universe ages. Gravity has the opposite effect. When the universe was young, it had a smaller space surface and massive objects were jammed closely together along that surface. But, as the universe expanded, the massive objects spread farther and farther apart. The separating distances between massive bodies implies that as the universe grows older gravity will become progressively weaker in its capacity to slow down cosmic expansion. Thus, depending on the values of the cosmic mass density and the cosmic dark energy density, at some point in the history of the universe cosmic expansion should transition from slowing down to speeding up.

Today, astronomers have accumulated measurements on nearly 500 type Ia supernovae extending out to look back times equal to 9.5 billion years ago.⁴ However, reliable distances beyond a corresponding look back time of 9.5 billion years have been beyond the scope of current tools—until now.

Active Galactic Nuclei

A team of four astronomers (three at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark and one at the University of Queensland in Australia) has found a novel way to transform very bright non-standard candles into standard candles. Their work establishes the reliability of a standard candle that would allow astronomers to perform precision cosmology measurements corresponding to look back times as far back as 13 billion years ago (when the universe was just 0.75 billion years old).⁵

Active galactic nuclei are the most luminous of the persistently shining objects in the universe. An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a very compact region in the center of a galaxy wherein a supergiant black hole is sucking in copious amounts of gas and dust. As that gas and dust approaches the event horizon of the black hole about 10 percent of the gas and dust’s mass is converted into energy. (By comparison the conversion of mass into energy in the Sun’s nuclear furnace is 0.7 percent.) AGNs are so very bright thanks to their extremely efficient conversion of mass into energy and the fact that the conversion occurs within a tiny volume surrounding the black hole.

The AGN family includes quasars, Seyfert galaxies (see figure 1), blazars, starburst galaxies, and radio loud galaxies. Because of their enormous brightness, AGNs can be used to probe the features of the most distant regions of the universe, regions that correspond to the earliest times of cosmic history.

Figure 1. NGC 1275, a Seyfert galaxy, is 237 million light-years away. The central cores of Seyfert galaxies form a subclass of active galactic nuclei. Image credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope (AURA/STScI)

There is one critical proviso. This new distance-measuring technique requires that at least one AGN’s distance be determined either by a direct geometric distance measuring technique or by a well-established standard candle technique such as exploiting Cepheid variable stars or type Ia supernova in the AGN. Currently, only the AGN NGC 3227 and NGC 4051 have direct distance estimates. However, the three AGN NGC 3227, NGC 4051, and NGC 4151 are all close enough to obtain reliable Cepheid-derived distances with the Hubble Space Telescope or with instruments of comparable capability.

Researchers’ Predictions

The four-astronomer team estimates that in 10 years or less their AGN distance measuring technique, using only existing astronomical instruments, will provide an independent determination of the universe’s age and of cosmic expansion rates throughout the past 11.5 billion years. With more time and better equipment, the technique should provide precise measures of cosmic expansion rates throughout the past 13 billion years.

These results establish that AGNs will give astronomers a detailed, accurate picture of the universe’s early expansion history. This forthcoming insight will also give cosmologists a better measure of the universe’s geometry, a more accurate date for the age of the universe, superior insight into the nature of dark energy, a much more detailed history of the universe, and a more exact picture of the cosmic creation event.

This superior history and picture will allow deeper and more rigorous tests of the big bang creation model. Moreover, it could provide even more evidence for the Bible’s description of cosmic creation and history. We at Reasons To Believe predict that the biblical big bang creation model and design of the universe for humanity’s benefit will pass these future measurement tests with flying colors.

Endnotes:

1. Hugh Ross, A Matter of Days (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2004), 139–48.

2. J. A. Braatz et al., “The Megamaser Cosmology Project. II. The Angular-Diameter Distance to UGC 3789,” Astrophysical Journal 718 (August 1, 2010): 657–65; Hugh Ross, “Results from Two Research Teams Improve Direct Distance Measurements and Strengthen the Creation Model, Part 2 (of 2),” Today’s New Reason to Believe, posted September 6, 2010, http://www.reasons.org/astronomy/big-bang/results-two-research-teams-improve-direct-distance-measurements-and-strengthen-creation-model-part-2.

3. Adam G. Riess et al., “Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant,” Astronomical Journal 116 (September 1998): 1009–38; S. Perlmutter et al., “Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae,” Astrophysical Journal 517 (June 1, 1999): 565–86.

4. M. Sullivan et al., “SNLS3: Constraints on Dark Energy Combining the Supernova Legacy Survey Three-Year Data with Other Probes,” Astrophysical Journal 737 (August 20, 2011): id. 102; N. Suzuki et al., “The Hubble Space Telescope Cluster Supernova Survey: V. Improving the Dark Energy Constraints Above z>1 and Building an Early-Type-Hosted Supernova Sample,” (May 2011): eprint arXiv:1105.3470v1; Steven A. Rodney et al., “Type Ia Supernovae at z>1.5 from the HST Multi-Cycle Treasury Surveys,” American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #219.01, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 43 (May 2011); Richard Kessler et al., “First-Year Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Results: Hubble Diagram and Cosmological Parameters,” Astrophysical Journal Supplement 185 (November 2009): 32–84.

5. D. Watson et al., “A New Cosmological Distance Measure Using Active Galactic Nuclei,” Astrophysical Journal Letters 740 (October 20, 2011): id. L49.

6. D. Watson et al., page 1 of id. L49.

• “Milky Way Gobbled Gobs of Galaxies”

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We’re taking a break from Today’s New Reason to Believe next week, but we’ll be back with more exciting scientific updates after the first of the year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Reasons To Believe!

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Like most parents, my wife and I struggle to teach our kids to eat the right amount of the right kinds of foods. Too little food results in them not having the strength they need. Too much food or the wrong kind of food leads to myriad other problems. But a balanced diet in the proper portions equips them to tackle their daily tasks. Likewise, the Milky Way Galaxy’s beautiful spiral arms show how our galaxy has maintained a healthy diet for the last 10 billion years.

In galactic terms (at least as far as life-friendly galaxies go), the proper “food” comes in the form of smaller galaxies. If the Milky Way (MWG) had “eaten” (collided with) too few smaller galaxies over its history, star formation would have ceased long ago. But in order to host life, a galaxy must form multiple generations of stars. This way a life-hosting solar system can form after previous stars produce elements heavier than helium (like carbon, oxygen, iron, and uranium) and scatter these elements throughout the galaxy. On the other hand, a collision with a galaxy that was too large would have disrupted the MWG’s spiral structure and led to conditions hostile to life.

New research now indicates that, in addition to driving star formation, this collision process also produces our galaxy’s spiral arm structure. A paper published in the Astrophysical Journal describes simulations of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy’s (Sgr) interactions with the MWG.¹ The simulations determine Sgr’s orbital history and reveals how the Sgr impacts the MWG’s structure. The results of the study demonstrate that this interaction, and others like it, produces significant effects on the MWG’s structure while the smaller galaxy’s material is incorporated into the MWG. Specifically, the collision results in spiral arm formation, affects the central bar, and adds energy to the outer part of the MWG’s disk.

A steady, healthy diet of smaller galaxies—like Sgr—ensured that the Milky Way could handle all the problems that had to be solved in order for life to be possible. Although galaxy collisions were (and are) frequent throughout the history of the universe, these results suggest that the life-friendly characteristics of our galaxy may not be common.