Transforming Life Sciences: Artificial Life

生物学和化学之间的前沿领域的任何一项进步都不会改变生活中的研究 科学不仅仅是合成一种人造生命形式(一种“外来生物”)。这种外来生物的意志 复制了许多我们在自然生命中所珍视的东西(包括它生长、进化和适应的能力)， 但有着不同的核心分子生物学。这将超越“人工合成”的概念 “生物学”和“仿生化学”，本周刚刚获得诺贝尔奖的第二位 化学，提供人工生物学，一个新的领域，将改变生物医学 未来几十年的科学和技术。 这一目标超越了美国国立卫生研究院目前对“描述性生物学”这一研究的定位。 这一范例已经在司长的工作组合中得到了很好的体现。事实上，我们一开始就假设 在这些现已成为经典的描述性战略中，司长现在支持的那些战略将 最终完成这项研究计划，制作出生物分子结构的强健图片 从原子尺度到宏观尺度。这里提出的工作将为 接下来是生命科学。 在进行变革性研究的任何应用程序中都有一个悖论。如果这是真的 具有变革性的是，人们无法预测其影响的细节。这对Peer来说是有问题的 复习一下。为了处理这一悖论，我们列出了六项技术能力，我们的 人工生命形式应该在体外初步工作已经交付的基础上交付。 这些措施包括改变我们产生临床使用的受体、配体和催化剂的方式， 降低诊断试剂盒生产成本，创造新的工程蛋白质类别。 一个类似的悖论产生了对科学的尊重。许多人现在认为，试金石是 “理解”必须是设计和综合的能力。然而，我们认识到这一理论 如果没有达尔文主义的支持，(现在和将来)是不足以进行设计的。我们的全球 因此，战略将设计和达尔文主义结合在一起。这种发现和范式改变的策略 基于假设的研究无法与之匹配。 再说一次，发现和范式变化是无法预测的，这造成了另一个同行审查问题。我们 通过来自体外研究的例子来管理这一点，这些研究已经改变了我们对核的理解 酸。 因此，这项提案包含了出人意料的大量初步结果。这 使其面临被排除在“变革性研究”计划之外的风险，希望它的 转型可以作为标准的NIH项目提供资金。这一希望已被充分证明是不切实际的； 这项实验已经多次尝试，但都以失败告终，部分原因是风险仍然很高 与实现第一个所需突破的努力相关联。为了管理这一风险，该计划 是为了提供许多成功的途径而构建的。平衡这一点是一个不争的事实，如果任何一个 在通往成功的路线中，结果(一种人工达尔文式的生命形式)将是 令人难忘的生物化学科学史上的任何一项成就。最后的, 我们提供了关于人工生命方面的生物安全的详细讨论。

No single advance at the frontier between biology and chemistry will transform research in the life sciences more than the synthesis of an artificial life form (a “xenobiotic”). This xenobiotic will reproduces much of what we value in natural life (including its ability to grow, evolve and adapt), but with a different core molecular biology. This would move beyond the visions of “synthetic biology” and “biomimetic chemistry”, the second recognized just this week with a Nobel Prize in chemistry, to deliver an artificial biology, a new field that will transform both biomedical science and technology for decades to come. This goal transcends the current orientation of the NIH towards “descriptive biology”, a research paradigm that is already well represented in the Director’s portfolio. Indeed, we begin by assuming that those now supported by the Director in these now-classical descriptive strategies will eventually complete this research programme, producing robust pictures of biomolecular structure from the atomic scale to the macroscopic scale. The work proposed here will lay the grounds for the life sciences that will follow next. A paradox is built into any application to do transformative research. If it is truly transformative, one cannot anticipate the details of its impact. This is problematic for peer review. To manage this paradox, we list a half- dozen technological capabilities that our artificial life form should deliver based on what in vitro preliminary work has already delivered. These include transforming the way we generate clinically used receptors, ligands, and catalysts, lowering the cost of diagnostic kit production, and creating new classes of engineered proteins. An analogous paradox arises respect to the science. Many now argue that the touchstone for “understanding” must be the ability to design and synthesize. However, we recognize that theory (now, and far into the future) is inadequate to design without support from Darwinism. Our global strategy therefore combines design and Darwinism. This strategy for discovery and paradigm change cannot be matched by hypothesis based research. Again, discovery and paradigm change cannot be predicted, creating another peer review issue. We manage this by examples from in vitro studies, which have transformed our understanding of nucleic acids. Consequently, this proposal contains an unexpectedly large number of preliminary results. This places it at risk of being excluded from a "transformative research" program under a hope can its transformation can funded as a standard NIH project. This hope has been fully shown to be quixotic; the experiment has been repeatedly tried and failed, in part because of the high risk still associated with efforts to achieve the first needed breakthrough. To manage this risk, the program is structured to give many routes to success. Balancing this is the unarguable fact that if any one of the routes to success is traversed, the result (an artificial Darwinian life form) will be as memorable as any of the many accomplishments in the history of biological-chemical science. Last, we provide a detailed discussion of biosafety with respect to artificial life.