Simulating Life

Hoping to understand how living cells developed from the basic chemical elements biochemists for years have tried to break down living matter into its component parts.

Dr. Sidney W. Fox of the University of Miami told of an opposite approach in a September 1976 lecture at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. He and others have assembled simple non-living chemical compounds in an attempt to simulate the earth's first living cells.

First, they mixed amino acids with water and heated them. The result was a combining of these simple compounds into complex, highly organized giant molecules. Then the solution containing these molecules is made more acidic and the temperature is lowered slightly (as would happen in going from day to night) In some cases the giant molecular bodies develop boundaries similar to cell walls and they divide themselves or grow new bud-like replicas of themselves. These first generation bodies also replicate themselves and a second generation develops.

Thus this new approach to understanding how life on earth might have begun is showing great promise. Dr. Fox argues that simple compounds, under the right circumstances, rather naturally order themselves, and go on to develop highly organized structures that are self reproducing. The end results are rather crude, and he suggests that 3-billion years of evolution may have been necessary to develop cells such as exist on the earth today.