kirk cameron's bad day part 2

alan thicke wrote the theme song to the facts of life. wtf?

Scientists Create a Form of Pre-Life



A self-assembling molecule synthesized in a laboratory may resemble the earliest form of information-carrying biological material, a transitional stage between lifeless chemicals and the complex genetic architectures of life.

Called tPNA, short for thioester peptide nucleic acids, the molecules spontaneously mimic the shape of DNA and RNA when mixed together. Left on their own, they gather in shape-shifting strands that morph into stable configurations.



The molecules haven’t yet achieved self-replication, the ultimate benchmark of life, but they hint at it. Best of all, their activities require no enzymes — molecules that facilitate chemical reactions, but didn’t yet exist in the primordial world modeled by scientists seeking insight into life’s murky origins.

“There have been many test tube experiments of evolving chemical sequences, but there hasn’t been a system that on its own can form under enzyme-free conditions,” said Reza Ghadiri, a Scripps Research Institute biochemist. “We satisfy some of the requirements of the long-term goal of having a purely chemical system that is capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.”

“The next phase is to see whether these molecules are capable of self-replication,” said Ghadiri. “That’s another two or three years of work.”

Asked how long it would take before fully synthetic life could be coaxed from an inert chemical mixture, Ghadiri said, “Soon. If not in our lifetime, then the next. In my opinion, it shouldn’t be longer than that.

source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/tpna/