Quote:
Originally Posted by doug mc
Has anyone run the experiment and observed the formation of self duplicating living cells from their chemical precursors?
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No, but we have synthesized amino acids and other relatively complex organic molecules using only a soup of raw materials and a bit of heat or electrical energy.
And viable, self-propagating synthetic cells have been produced in the laboratory by creating a smaller genome than any known natural organism, effectively creating an entirely new species:
https://www.nature.com/news/minimal-...c-life-1.19633
Mother nature took some hundreds of millions of years to create life on Earth; the fact that it is taking us more than fifty years of laboratory experimentation shouldn't really be a surprise. (We haven't managed to get fusion power working yet either, despite relentless effort and billions of dollars of expenditure over much the same period, but I don't doubt our ability to get there eventually.)