How to build a living thing
Name
567643173-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
2.05 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
6e05f85d8c97e859f03b0fe883c3a8e6
Author(s)
Campbell, MacGregor (MacGregor Ballard)
Advisor(s)
Thomas Levenson.
Date Issued
2009
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
A number of research groups worldwide are working on various aspects of the problem of building life from scratch. Jack W. Szostak's lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts is one of the centers of the action. Open a recent news article on some discovery related to synthetic life or life's origins on Earth, and he's likely to be quoted. Szostak fills his lab with ambitious, bright, young people, a few of whom have gone on to found their own labs. His work provides a lens through which to view the contemporary state of progress toward the ancient and ambitious goal to take what was not alive before and make it live. Starting from an initial plan to make a self-assembling, self-replicating membrane containing a self-replicating genetic molecule, the lab has had some striking successes and, off course, some setbacks. Recent breakthroughs suggest that the realization of a wholly human-designed and created life form looms in the foreseeable future.
Description
Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2009.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 23-25).
Subjects
Graduate Program in Science Writing.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Graduate Program in Science Writing
MIT Program in Writing & Humanistic Studies
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
