“It’s evolving. It’s doing what we designed it to do.” That sentence isn’t from the chilling trailer for the next Michael Chrichton adaptation. It’s the words of an honest-to-goodness biochemist describing his creation, a synthetic self-replicating jumble of chemicals called AEGIS—Artificially Expanded Genetic Information System. 

AEGIS is an experiment devised by biochemist Steve Benner at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution that aims to get at the roots of life itself by creating artificial self-replicating chemicals that are capable of evolution. And it works. Benner has AEGIS happily replicating and evolving in a beaker in his Florida lab. What makes AEGIS different than everyday life? For starters, it has 12 base pairs instead of four. Beyond that, information is sketchy, but Benner assured Discover News that AEGIS is thriving. In fact, it’s the first synthetic genetic system capable of Darwinian evolution.

Now all we have to do is wait for it to escape and consume us all.

I plan to contact Benner in the coming weeks to get more info about AGIS—how it was created, what he’s learned. Look for an update.

And thanks to Matt Chisholm for the tip!

Link to MSNBC article