Nature Is Giving Scientists Hope In Making Silicon-Based Lifeforms

For the first time ever, a new research has displayed how natural organisms contribute to making silicon-carbon bonds.

Engineering.com reported that chemists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in San Diego developed a new breed of bacterial protein called cytochrome c, which is found in hot springs in Iceland, to make synthetic bonds that would link silicon and carbon. This study gives hope to the much-desired existence of silicon-based life.

"No living organism is known to put silicon-carbon bonds together, even though silicon is so abundant, all around us, in rocks and all over the beach," said Jennifer Kan, a postdoctoral scholar and the study's lead author.

The San Diego-based team then mutated the DNA of the enzyme until it resulted into having its ideal trait, which is to have an improved biological function than the previously developed enzymes. Mail Online reported that this process is called directed evolution, introduced by Frances Arnold, Caltech chemical engineering, bioengineering and biochemistry professor and the study's principal investigator.

Arnold likened the process into breeding a race horse, which forces the breeder to recognize the inherent ability of a horse in becoming a racer. She said that a good breeder makes sure it is passed on to succeeding generations, adding that they are just doing this same process with proteins.

Since this study looks at breeding silicon-based life forms as its goal, could life really evolve from it? Arnold believes it is still up to nature.

"This study shows how quickly nature can adapt to new challenges," she explained. "The DNA-encoded catalytic machinery of the cell can rapidly learn to promote new chemical reactions when we provide new reagents and the appropriate incentive in the form of artificial selection. Nature could have done this herself if she cared to."

This study, titled Directed evolution of cytochrome c for carbon-silicon bond formation: Bringing silicon to life," was published in Science Magazine.