“Scientists announced a bold step Thursday in the enduring quest to create artificial life. They’ve produced a living cell powered by manmade DNA. While such work can evoke images of Frankenstein-like scientific tinkering, it also is exciting hopes that it could eventually lead to new fuels, better ways to clean polluted water, faster vaccine production and more.”
I heard the lead researcher interviewed. He talked about how they took common chemicals, rather like what existed in the soup on early Earth.
The Intelligent Design (read creationist) crowd has argued that life is just too complex to arise from inorganic chemicals, and they keep ranting about the eye. Guess this pretty much lays that gibberish to rest.
