Can synthetic biology shed light on the origins of life?

Christophe Malaterre (1)

1 IHPST - Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques

It is a most commonly accepted hypothesis that life originated from inanimate matter, somehow being a synthetic product of organic aggregates, and as such a result of some sort of prebiotic synthetic biology. In the past decades, the newly formed scientific discipline of synthetic biology has set ambitious goals by pursuing the complete design and production of genetic circuits, entire genomes, or even whole organisms. I argue that synthetic biology might also shed some novel and interesting perspectives on the question of the origins of life, and that in addition, it might challenge our most commonly accepted definitions of life, thereby changing the ways we might think about life and its origins.

Mots clés: definition of life; origins of life; prebiotic chemistry; synthetic biology

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Christophe Malaterre. Can synthetic biology shed light on the origins of life?. Biological Theory, 2009, 4 (4), pp.357-367. ⟨halshs-00792148⟩