Duda Jarek

How to make such prokaryote? Huge problem is to create chiral enzymes, I will sketch in a moment how how I imagine that. Now take a solution of phospholipids, it will automatically create a bubble, fill the membrane with proteins, pump DNA, ... , ATP ... and voilla About the other parts of it... The cell should 'live' in specyfic, precise conditions, without most of them. Then it should try to stabilise itself, rebuild what's needed (like the wall). This would give us time to do something to allow it to reproduce. Having this small factories, synthesis of elements will be simple. But the real problem is with eukaryote. I think we could use the original cell and just replace/add what we need... Most of the proteins work with symmetric molecues, the other we could block or do nothing with them - if we place the cell in good conditions, feed it (even artifically with eg ATP), it should be stable while 'slowly' adding chiral molecues, replacing DNA ... and after some time/generations it will replace everything itself. Here is a sketch of production the (chiral) string of protein(/DNA): Prepare a surface with with oriented lattice of something that can adhere amino acids and that they can be easly released (by light, electric current, pH, temperature...). Then 'just' print (like ink printer) or litograph (use different solutions of aminoacids and light specyfic pattern to adhere) given patterns of strings of amino acids... Then use some catalysis to join neighbours. We would have maaany copies full of errors at one time. For selection process, we can use something the correct ones would adhere to. Now we can slowly recreate bottom-up customized ecosystem... But how to do it more effective and stable? Maybe we need viruses? I have a discussion about it on http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27078

There is a problem - for example we have human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) in our DNA. Before transforming organisms, we should identify any dangerous parts in our introns, virus's capsids, and replace them with something neutral. If not - they can be used as a good start for evolution... I was thinking about projecting ecosystem based on harmony - there are maaaany problems to take under consideration - I've decided to start new thred. Generally - let's say we can manage with most of microorganism, there are some concetps for viruses too, http://virology.wordpress.com/ but they looks a bit hopeless for me...

why with chiral? Becouse there has been everything made ... a few billions years of evolution, just take what you need... Of course there is possible much more 'perfect' life, in devalopment of which we will make huge steps, not possible while evolution, like exchanging neurons with something based on conductors - with much higher speeds ... But devalopment of it, is unimaginary difficult ... much easier, for the beginning, is to copy (reflect) the nature About overpopulating, population becaming older ... it's already inaviodable social problem... In this way You can say to go back a few hundreds years... Science can give tools to make life easier, longer ... but what do people do with it...? About effectiveness... Look at the ecosystem - it's neverending domestic war, most of energy is 'waste' on competition, fights... And we would like to change it into something closer to harmony, by removing some organisms, so the energy (solar) would be mainly used to production of proteins, sugars and reproduction ...

To create a stable ecosystem, we would have to transform a large part of ours. We would do it to reduce maximally competitiveness, aggressiveness - to maximize its effectiveness by harmony. Of course there will be many empty, profitable ecological niches and organisms would want to evolve to use them. But... 1. I cannot imagine that viruses would be needed - they wouldn't be transformed at all - they would have to evolve from zero, like free DNA. But last time it evolved pararelly with its victims, now organisms have very advanced specific/non-specyfic defensive systems ... 2. We would need many kinds of microorganisms. Symbiotic ones rather wouldn't need have aggressive mechanisms - they would have evolve them from zero. The problem would be with eg. saprotroph, but without viruses, evolution should be much slower and we humans can make it much more difficult for them. 3. Higher organism would need enormous large time to evolve... And if we would have new large problem, we can reverse again. There are some problems with living in sterile environment. There is the hygiene hypothesis that it can lead to autoimmune diseases. We would have to weaken the immune system or give it something else to do, learn it good responses. The other thing is that small amounts of stress (like radiation or infections) is positive - it eg. helps to get rid of damaged - weak cells. But I think we will understand better this mechanisms and learn to use them more effective artificially. Maybe transformation of our ecosytem would be to expensive, but in some time we would need to create completly new ecosystem eg. on Mars, and its effectiveness will be veeery important...

About finding the way by pathogens... Evolution is a process of finding local fitness maximum by small steps... Let say that a virus get into chiral cell ... what next? Bacterias would eg need normal sugars... Chiral enviroment would be hostile for them, there is no way that eg virus could just transform naturally into chiral form. They would have to evolve from zero. Or by sabotage... but then we could easier controll their population, and they couldn't reach actual level. The danger I've found is that eg unicell which is able to photosynthesis wouldn't have many natural enemies ... it could evolve...dominate our enviroment. Very important priniple for the beginning would be: from chlorophyll organisms we can transform only plants which population can be controlled! About problems of sterile life... there is quite sensful 'hygiene hypothesis', that it would increase susceptibility to allergic diseases. But I think we would be able to manage with it...? About symbiotic organisms... Of course finally it would be needed to transform large part of our enviroment. We could start with eg ecoli and use them as a factories on the beginnig. Plants... and finally maybe human... Question if such chiral cell would function normally? I've found an article arxiv.org/ftp/cond-mat/papers/0507/0507347.pdf which says in abstract that corrections for P-symmetry would be 10^-17(...?). I could'n find more pricise formulation, but this number suggests that it would be many orders of magnitude smaller than thermal noise. It could be essential in symmetry breaking, but not in funtioning. We humans like to show our power and it's rather unavoidable that some day, we would be able to create a new life (what is the whole talking about nanorobots?) ... I think we will start with chiral... They could give us not only health, but I think they could allow us to increase efficiency of our ecosystems, of the most clean and powerful source of energy - sun.

A while ago I thought about some concept, which should which should allow us, to get rid of all unwanted life. This is – by becoming incompatible. Previously I thought that we could do it by changing the language which encodes nucleotide triples into amino acids (be replacing eg tRNA), but it could result in enormous number of problems with gene regulation. I’ve just found the “safe” way – take mirror reflection! If we replace left-handed amino acids with right-handed, we would get mirror reflections of natural proteins. Analogically we could get chiral DNA, sugars, etc. on which new enzymes would work perfectly. Finally we would get normally functioning mirror reflection of natural organism, on which natural viruses couldn’t interact. We know, that there is a small violation of such symmetry (P), but it shouldn’t change the biochemistry. Such organism would have to be feed with reflected food, produced eg by reflected plants, which use to production symmetric (not chiral) molecules and unpolarized light. In such world natural hostile organisms, if wouldn’t be translated by a terrorist organization, wouldn’t have chance to transform into chiral versions. They could evolve from zero, but we would have many thousands years of peace. How to make it? We can imagine synthesis of every molecule, such reflected zygote is made of. The problem is to create the correct structure of membranes with specific concentrations … fill it with life… What with actual trends in nano-engineering should become possible in at most 50 years, I think. Then we could slowly transform our ecosystems. In that way we could get rid of any plagues. But if in such sterile environment, we would have perfect health? Maybe stresses created by small infections can, like small amounts of radiation, have positive long term influence…? What do You think about this concept?