Part One - Life into Machines.

Part Two tomorrow - Machines into Life.

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DNA as building blocks?

The field of DNA nanotechnology has literally gained another dimension.

Using pieces of DNA like so many Legos, researchers made a series of complex, three-dimensional structures. The technique could eventually be used to design custom-shaped, nano-scale drug-delivery systems and diagnostic devices.

"Imagine that you could encode different charge patterns on your Lego bricks, so that they only fit together in a very specific manner," said molecular biologist William Shih of Harvard Medical School, co-author of a study Wednesday in Nature. "We make linear sequences of DNA, throw them into a pot, and let them find each other."

"We'd like to build larger and larger structures," he said. "It's like the evolution of integrated circuit microprocessors. We've been able, over time, to increase the number of transistors on each circuit. We'd like to follow the same trajectory with molecularly engineered objects."

Programming a cell?

In an essential step toward programming cells as precisely as computers, synthetic biologists have finally learned to count.

By linking a series of protein switches, researchers made prototype cell-level counters that could eventually be used to coordinate complex sets of genetic instructions running on biomolecular machines, from disease-hunting cells to intracellular computing networks. In the electronic world, basic counting functions underlie even the most powerful supercomputers.

"What we've done is to impose some of the controls we've imposed in electrical engineering onto the biological cell," said synthetic biologist Timothy Lu at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We hope to be able to control the cell more reliably, and have it perform more defined functions. This forms the fundamental basis for building more complicated circuits."

Creating artifical Life?

A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life.

It's not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.

Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe. 

One wonders if our hubris will destroy us someday soon.

Stay Tuned...