“In the beginning....”

How often has this simple phrase spilled out of our mouths over the millennia as we have tried to explain our origins? Ancient societies constructed elaborate creation myths. Modern religions offer their own versions of genesis. Today scientists are probing for an answer by unraveling the series of events that breathed life into inanimate matter some four billion years ago.

While reporting my story “The Rise of Life on Earth,” I met with researchers attempting to create life in their laboratories. By manipulating RNA—part of the genetic code of all organisms—they are striving to fashion molecules that can reproduce themselves and evolve into new strands of RNA. Although these experiments still have far to go, investigators may one day produce RNA chains that meet the technical definition of being “alive.”

If that time comes, it can’t help but change the way we view ourselves and our place on this planet. We will have created a new life-form unlike anything else inhabiting Earth today.

This artificial life won’t look quite like the Frankenstein monster. “Living” strands of RNA will be naked molecules far simpler than even the most basic species we know of. Some scientists won’t even consider these evolving molecules as living because they will lack many of the features—such as a cell membrane or other protective envelope—seen in all existing organisms.

Such technicalities notwithstanding, these types of experiments raise unsettling questions, much like the current debate about the ethics of cloning human beings. Society will wonder about the potential outcome of spawning a new type of living entity. Will we perceive this success as a milestone or a menace?

One prediction seems solid: It is only a matter of time before the quest to create life spawns a new breed of Hollywood disaster movie, coming soon to a theater near you.

The title collage is made from an image by O. Louis Mazzatenta.

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