Fwd: [diybio-eu] this thing they call life

[Nathan McCorkle]

Seems like the easiest non-academic way to explain cell vs cell-free
advantages are with cooking. Can you bake a nice cake without a few
different containers? Those containers are just like cell/organelle
membranes. Do you like your milk mixing with wine and feces? If not,
thank containers. Do you like your batteries to discharge on their
own? If not, thank containers (in this case there are a few
containers, inside the battery, and the air outside also acts to
contain the electric charge while the charge is below the spark
breakdown of air). Do you like flooding and drought? If not thank
river dams, as the containment of water helps to decouple powerful
water from the immediate path of least resistance.

Does the guy like life in general? As it wouldn't be happening without
containers.


Even the universe is separated/contained in small areas called
galaxies clusters etc... if there was nothing to separate them, they'd
all just react and be done with. This isn't the way things are, so it
seems quite natural to me to understand the utility of containers.

Wish the Titanic didn't sink? Should have contained the bulkheads
(they were open at the top, allowing water to flood adjacent
bulkheads).

For some papers on the electrical stuff (and also photosynthesis,
solar cells), use the keyword charge-separation. We'd be nowhere
without it.

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Rüdiger Trojok
<tro...@openbioprojects.net> wrote:
> Hey everyone!
>
> I am having some kind of theoretical issue right now, that is that I need to
> define life.
>
> It is part of a job that I am doing for the Technikfolgenabschätzungsbüro
> beim Deutschen Bundestag,
>
> discussing the implications of synthetic Biology. Some guy argued that
> Darwinian evolution is unpredictable
>
> and that only cell free systems should be used for safety reasons - and to
> trash all other approaches.
>
> I want to explain why cell free systems are nice, but you lose to much of
> the special functionality of cellular production
>
> by restricting it to that.
>
> So now I am currently trying to update the picture on life and evolution,
> supplementing it with
>
> recent insights in this domain of research to convince him why hacking life
> is cool and what the thing is actually about.
>
> Would be awesome to get your support, as this guy I am arguing against is a
> well established old biochemistry professor,
>
> who got at least ten times as much money and time and personnel to bring up
> his arguments compared to me,
>
> so a crowdsourced update on life and evolution would rock it J
>
>
>
> A brief pitch by you of the main argument of the literature you cite would
> be ideal.
>
> I will of course feed back the info I collected to the community, after some
> digestion time.
>
>
>
> Can you help me with some cool papers you know about such terms like:
>
> · adaptive evolution (Lamarckian style)
>
> · Horizontal gene transfer
>
> · directed Hypermutation
>
> · the functional role of membranes
>
> · origin of life hypothesis
>
> · energetic of evolution
>
> · information concept (syntax and semantics, system of reference)
>
> · information storage (is it only DNA?)
>
> · Epigenetics
>
> · you name it
>
>
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Rüdiger



--
-Nathan


--
-Nathan