Evolution in a Bottle: Synthetic Life Oozes Closer to Reality

March 24, 2009

Gerald F. Joyce admits that when he saw the results of the experiment, he was tempted to halt further work and publish the results immediately. After years of trying, he and his student Tracey Lincoln had finally found a couple of short but powerful RNA sequences that when mixed together along with a slurry of simpler RNA building blocks will double in number again and again, expanding 10-fold in a few hours and continuing to replicate as long as they have space and raw material. (Scientific American)