Life Without Reproduction
The existence of life without reproduction is the subject of some speculation. The biological study of how the origin of life led from non-reproducing elements to reproducing organisms is called abiogenesis. Whether or not there were several independent abiogenetic events, biologists believe that the last universal ancestor to all present life on earth lived about 3.5 billion years ago.
Today, some scientists have speculated about the possibility of creating life non-reproductively in the laboratory. Several scientists have succeeded in producing simple viruses from entirely non-living materials. The virus is often regarded as not alive. Being nothing more than a bit of RNA or DNA in a protein capsule, they have no metabolism and can only replicate with the assistance of a hijacked cell's metabolic machinery.
The production of a truly living organism (e.g., a simple bacterium) with no ancestors would be a much more complex task, but may well be possible according to current biological knowledge. A synthetic genome has been transferred into an existing bacterium where it replaced the native DNA, resulting in the artificial production of a new M. mycoides organism.
Read more about this topic: Reproduction
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or reproduction:
“There is a right according to which we may deprive a human being of his life but none according to which we may deprive him of his death: to do so is mere cruelty.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “Artist.””
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)