Anyone interested in a game?

[This Guy]

PLEASE READ ALL THIS BEFORE POSTING. I know it's long, but bare with me please :)

As often happens, my mind was wandering and a stray thought got stuck in it. I was thinking about the beginning of life on our planet. We know that folks have been trying to simulate early Earth conditions, and recreate the beginning life forms that are thought to have started the whole evolutionary trek to us.

The thought that stuck was, if someone is able to create an early form of life (single cell whatever, or whatever life form would be considered the "beginning"), how long would it take to force evolution on this life form, and end up with some form of a creature. Something that we could see with our naked eyes, and that would resemble something we might recognize as life (some form of arms/legs, a head, eyes). Also something that could, with enough time, be evolved into something like an ape.

Depending on when we consider the first forms of life to have existed, it took hundreds of millions, to billions of years to get to us.

So, here's the game! Explain how long (as generally or specifically as you can or choose) you think it would take to get a recognizable life form from the first form. List some of the short cuts you think could be done to speed the process up, while still not changing the life form directly. Only changes to it's environment are allowed. Discuss any thoughts you have on why/why not the process could/could not be sped up.

My desire is that posters in this thread do so with the assumption that the first life form on earth has been created under laboratory conditions, and there are enough samples to work on the forced evolution.

I ask that this not be the thread to discuss evolution vs. creation/ID. And that philosophical discussions be taken to another thread. I also ask that no debates on the possibility of this happening be started. I'd ask that those debates be carried on in a separate thread.

My desire is to see how others (more learned than I) think things could progress if the lab work succeeds. Oh, and rest assured, your prolly more learned that I ;) I'll do the first post, to give an idea of the type reply I'd like to see (though I expect most others will provide much more information/insight than mine will).

Obviously I can't stop any type of post, and I welcome any input/ideas that might better define the premise of "the game". I also welcome any links to more details on current research in this area. I do ask that only those that are willing to contribute within the guidelines listed above reply. My intent is that this be a fun thread, with some decent discussions on the possibility of speeding up evolution, not debates/arguments over whether or not it's possible or the right thing to do. But of course, I can only ask :)

For some info on lab work in this area, you can look here -
http://exobio.ucsd.edu/research.htm

[This Guy]

This is where I show how stupid I am. I'm confused on the whole first form of life issue itself. So I'm going from single cell something, to something much more complex.

I think the early stages of evolution could be sped way up, by forcing changes in the environment as rapidly as the life form can handle. Based on my understanding of work that has been done to change what fairly simple life forms live on, I believe that large evolutionary changes could take place within perhaps a year or so. It's when the life form starts becoming more complex that I draw a blank. And I'm not even sure at what stage of complexity the time required would be increased greatly. My guess would be that at some stage of a high number of multiple cells things would start getting tricky.

My bottom line, uneducated guess is that to go from the first form of life to something that we can see, and has recognizable features, would take at least a few hundred years. Perhaps a few thousand years.

The method would be by keeping the life form(s) in a completely controlled environment, and changing that environment as rapidly as possible to weed out (as it were) the non-beneficial mutations until the goal is met.

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

This is where I show how stupid I am. I'm confused on the whole first form of life issue itself. So I'm going from single cell something, to something much more complex.

I think the early stages of evolution could be sped way up, by forcing changes in the environment as rapidly as the life form can handle. Based on my understanding of work that has been done to change what fairly simple life forms live on, I believe that large evolutionary changes could take place within perhaps a year or so. It's when the life form starts becoming more complex that I draw a blank. And I'm not even sure at what stage of complexity the time required would be increased greatly. My guess would be that at some stage of a high number of multiple cells things would start getting tricky.

My bottom line, uneducated guess is that to go from the first form of life to something that we can see, and has recognizable features, would take at least a few hundred years. Perhaps a few thousand years.

The method would be by keeping the life form(s) in a completely controlled environment, and changing that environment as rapidly as possible to weed out (as it were) the non-beneficial mutations until the goal is met.

The problem I see with the experiment is that you have no control over the mutations that occur during DNA copy. You would have to know when a mutation occured, say first multicell group, and then immediately ensure the environment favored that mutation. The difference in the laboratory called Earth is the sheer number of organisms, environments, and mutations that could occur simultaneously. Keep in mind, mutations are random, the environment dictates which are more successful, less successful, or neutral.

[Ladewig]

Something that we could see with our naked eyes, and that would resemble something we might recognize as life (some form of arms/legs, a head, eyes).


Wouldn't the fact that it is organic and moving be enough to recognize it as life? Even uneducated people can look at an earthworm and tell it is a living being.

In case you consider this question to be too off topic to be in this very specifically-limited thread:

My bottom line, uneducated guess is that to go from the first form of life to something that we can see, and has recognizable features, would take at least a few hundred years. Perhaps a few thousand years.

Although I am a complete amateur in the field, I have to say your estimates are low by several orders of magnitude. Of course, the confounding factor in such an estimate is that after a few thousand years, perhaps our understanding of evolutionary biology will reach a point where is possible to direct the process to the point you suggest. Using only technology and knowledge we have in 2006, I'm not even convinced it could be done at all.


- - - - - - -

You'll find you'll get better responses to your future theads if you title them more clearly. Simply adding the word "evolution" to the end of your existing title would have been enough to get more knowledgeable people to open this thread.

[CurtC]

The problem with trying to recreate abiogenesis in the lab, besides not knowing the exact chemical composition of the Earth at the time, is that nature's on lab was the size of the Earth, not just a few test tubes, and it still took hundreds of millions of years. How many billions of years would it take to do something similar in a few test tubes?

[Roboramma]

I think it would be very hard to estimate time scales because such an experiment has not been done.

But I wouldn't be surprised if something like this could be done. The problem is how exactly you want your "end of the line" organism to resemble whatever it is you want it to resemble. You suggested apes.

Okay, there is one simple way to that. Look at the genome of a living ape, and use that as where you want to get to. So you start with a particular genome and you look at how many mutations would be needed, how many duplications, and in what order, you would need in order to get to that ape.
Ah. But you need to know more than that. You also need to know what the phenotypic expression of those mutations would be, because you are intending to influence this with the environment.
Not only that, but many of them might (probably would) lead to reproductive dead ends in any environment (well, unless we're assuming very artificial environments are allowed...)
So now we have to redo our route, taking into consideration that each and every transitional form has to be able to live and reproduce in an environment that we can create. Of course this is impossible now, because we simply don't know what those transitional genomes will represent phenotypically until we run the experiment.
Also, as pointed out up-thread, we don't have control over which mutations take place when. So we either set it up so that a certain environment favours the specific mutation we're waiting for, and no other, and wait for that to happen, or we have to deal with the randomness of evolution.

There is another way, though, which is to ignore the genome completely and only deal with the phenotypes. This doesn't allow us to get arbitrarily close to our "ideal form" - the living ape that we're trying to recreate. What we'll end up with is at best an example of convergent evolution, and their genomes will probably be very very different.

This method entails planning out a route of small changes that lead from a single celled organism to an ape-like creature. But again there are problems. One of them is that we don't know if there will be genes for the specific phenotypic expression that we're hoping for. Very often, sure, but what if we run into a dead end? Then we've got to change things around and start going in an completely unplanned direction. This doesn't matter in nature, because there is no plan to begin with, but in our case, we don't have the ability to make a plan because we can't foresee all the eventualities.
Basically, we might still have to take a rather circuitous route from bacterium to ape, though almost certainly far more direct than the one that nature originally took.

Because of all of these uncertainties I don't know if a timeline could be established without actually running such an experiment. On the other hand I'm sure that there are plenty of "shortcuts" as you say that we could use to speed things up.

[This Guy]

The problem I see with the experiment is that you have no control over the mutations that occur during DNA copy. You would have to know when a mutation occured, say first multicell group, and then immediately ensure the environment favored that mutation. The difference in the laboratory called Earth is the sheer number of organisms, environments, and mutations that could occur simultaneously. Keep in mind, mutations are random, the environment dictates which are more successful, less successful, or neutral.

My thoughts are that the starting life forms would be simple microorganisms that would have a short life span. That would make for a short time between generations, thus relatively quick response to environmental changes. As stated, I'm not well schooled in this subject, so my thoughts may well be out of touch with reality. But, that's why I think the early stages of evolution could be sped up. On the earth, most changes were gradual, other than a few major events. In a lab setting, the changes could be very rapid, in comparison.

I would think that with a colony size of a few million single cell "things" with a life span of say a few minutes, or even a few hours, with some fine tuning, these "things" could be forced to adapt by changing the environment so that the mutations that assist with survival in the new environment are quickly allowed to flourish while those that don't are forced out.

Once the life forms start reaching a more complex state, I would think it would be harder to speed things up. But if those early evolutionary changes are forced at a much faster rate I would think millions of years could be shaved off the time required for "full" evolution. Now, millions, from hundreds of millions isn't much I know. But it's at least conceivable that the more complex forms could have some speed up in their evolution also, though as their lifespans increased, the minimum time needed would increase, and as their size increased there would be constraints on the number of "things" you could work with at a time.

[This Guy]

Wouldn't the fact that it is organic and moving be enough to recognize it as life? Even uneducated people can look at an earthworm and tell it is a living being.

In case you consider this question to be too off topic to be in this very specifically-limited thread:



Although I am a complete amateur in the field, I have to say your estimates are low by several orders of magnitude. Of course, the confounding factor in such an estimate is that after a few thousand years, perhaps our understanding of evolutionary biology will reach a point where is possible to direct the process to the point you suggest. Using only technology and knowledge we have in 2006, I'm not even convinced it could be done at all.


- - - - - - -

You'll find you'll get better responses to your future theads if you title them more clearly. Simply adding the word "evolution" to the end of your existing title would have been enough to get more knowledgeable people to open this thread.

Hadn't considered a worm lol Point taken :) I was thinking something more along the lines of a bug. But a worm, or about anything visible that moves, would do.

My guess may well be off a LOT. My reply above explains a little better why I think the hundreds of millions of years can at least be shaved down a bit, and maybe a lot. But obviously that's a totally uneducated guess, and likely has no relevance in real life.

Yea, I shoulda put evolution in the title. Good call, and bad move on my part. Thanks for the advice!

[This Guy]

I think it would be very hard to estimate time scales because such an experiment has not been done.

But I wouldn't be surprised if something like this could be done. The problem is how exactly you want your "end of the line" organism to resemble whatever it is you want it to resemble. You suggested apes.


--SNIPPED ALL THE GOOD POINTS just to save space--

Actually, I was thinking ending at something that is visible, and that then could evolve into an ape or something similar. Not going all the way to an ape.

You made some very good points! And I'm sure the points apply whether trying to evolve from single cell to worm, or ape.

We know that evolution was not truly directed. It just worked out the way it did because of the way things went. And there are MANY things that had to happen when they did to end where we are now. If any of those things had happened in a different time, or a different way, we might not be here talking about this.

Do we have a good enough understanding of how things have evolved to recreate those conditions that led us here, in a lab?

I believe we THINK we do. There are at least some decent theories. Could we force environmental changes to match the changes we think lead to us? Simultaneous experiments with the most likely theories being tested at the same time, to see what the results are? Think that would result in a more predictable outcome?

I guess what I'm thinking is, our evolution was random and unguided. That took a LONG time. But, we have some ideas of how it went. What caused the changes from species to species. If life is ever created in a lab, we have some ideas of how the environment should change to get to the next step. That alone should speed things up a LOT.

[Cynric]

I think we're being a bit conservative so far. In principle, given limitless resources, I reckon complex multicellular life could be achieved a lot more rapidly (maybe decades). It will of course depend on the reproductive speed of the organisms, but that could be selected for.

Things we can certainly do:
- Increase the rate of mutation beyond that in nature.
- Select for desired characteristics independently of competition (i.e. artificial, not natural selection).
- Run parallel experiments selecting for different traits.
- Mix traits using genetic engineering (there's a term you don't hear very often nowadays).

To take the example of a major step in the development of multicellular life: the endosymbiote theory [that the organelles in eukaryotic cells evolved from one prokaryotic cell well adapted for e.g. respiration, being absorbed by another prokaryotic cell, and forming a mutualist relationship].

I reckon we could jump that hurdle pretty quickly. Develop one of your cell lines under conditions of metabolic stress, and select another on the basis of cell size. Combine the two (either by transfection of the desired genes, or physical association) and select the big cells by putting them under metabolic stress.

Hmm. Needs work, but I hope you get the drift.

[Soapy Sam]

High mutation rates are pointless unless there is a selective process "cherry picking"the "best" mutations.

I think the answer depends greatly on whether we introduce sex, or some equivalent such as plasmid transfer.

My guess would still be millions of years,(for something as complex as an annelid), but I'm not really sure we are all thinking about the same process. Molecules that reproduce (ie crystals) could be produced in minutes. A virus looks spookily crystalline at times. That's the bottom estimate.

Deliberate, consciously selected selection could produce some sort of motile globule in a matter of decades or years, I suspect. Philosophers would then argue for centuries about whether it was "really alive.

[Cynric]

High mutation rates are pointless unless there is a selective process "cherry picking"the "best" mutations.

I think the answer depends greatly on whether we introduce sex, or some equivalent such as plasmid transfer.

My guess would still be millions of years,(for something as complex as an annelid), but I'm not really sure we are all thinking about the same process. Molecules that reproduce (ie crystals) could be produced in minutes. A virus looks spookily crystalline at times. That's the bottom estimate.

Deliberate, consciously selected selection could produce some sort of motile globule in a matter of decades or years, I suspect. Philosophers would then argue for centuries about whether it was "really alive.

I took the baseline for the experiment to be unicellular life. Otherwise, yes, it would be a much taller order.

[This Guy]

Some nice input from you folks! Just what I had hoped for! Thanks :)

As for the "cherry picking" of the best mutations, wouldn't rapid changes in the environment, to the expected environment of the next stage of evolution have the effect of doing that? Would that not in effect pick the mutations that allow survival at the next stage? And by rapid, I mean as fast as possible, without killing off all the "things" (not sure what other term to use).

Hard for me to describe my thoughts on this. My vocabulary, and general knowledge level leaves me in a weak position to state my case. And that also leads to the most likely possibility, that I have no clue what I'm talking about, and I'm taking a (necessary, on my part) over simplistic view of what in fact would be a very complex procedure.

Seems that most of us that have posted on the thread believe we could speed things up, just different opinions on how much, and what it might take to do so.

I've learned a few things from several of the above post, and I'm grateful for that. Had to look up a few words just to figure out what was being said. That's good also. Means I learned even more :)

I'm also grateful that folks have pretty much followed my (perhaps, but not intentionally, overbearing) request for post content. I hope I didn't bend forum etiquette by my request. So far it's made the thread a lot less messy, and on topic, which was my hope.

I love how willing folks on this forum are to share their knowledge and thoughts, in generally a polite, not condescending manner. Makes even idgets like me feel welcomed ;)

Thanks!