Experiment flirts with the barrier between Life and Non-Life

One of the great unsolved mysteries of science has always been where Life and Non-Living Chemistry meet. Life is capable of reproducing itself, of consuming energy, and of growing with time. There have always been some aspects of chemistry which seem to fit this criteria - crystals for example - but they obviously did not really show aspects of life. Now, scientists in California believe they have found the dividing line by creating a set of RNA molecules from scratch which are capable of self-replication.

The system, created by Gerald Joyce and Tracey Lincoln at the Scripps research institute in La Jolla, California, involves a cross-replicating pair of ribozymes (RNA enzymes), each about 70 nucleotides long, which catalyse each other's synthesis. So the 'left' ribozyme templates the synthesis of the 'right', which in turn templates the 'left' and so on, building each other via Watson-Crick base pairing.

'This is the very end of the line, where chemistry starts turning into biology,' says Joyce. 'It's the first case, other than in biology, of molecular information having been immortalised.'

Some, of course, will say this another nail in the coffin of a Creator God. Others will say it is proof that scientists lie. Wiser heads will realize it says neither, but is another window into how Life works and perhaps the mechanisms that drive our own bodies.