What are some examples of progress in the laboratory toward the creation of life from nonliving chemicals?
A. In spite of much honest effort, there are only weak examples of such progress. Yes, random RNA sequences have recently been shown to exhibit ligase activity, for example (Eckland et al., Science v269 p364). But the net result of this research — in the flood of new knowledge about the complexity of a bacterial cell — is that the goal looks farther away than ever. Francis Crick has apparently despaired of finding the origin of life in nonliving chemicals; in 1981 he wrote Life Itself, in which he advocated a theory now categorized as “directed panspermia.” Q.
