full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Martin Hanczyc: The line between life and not-life

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Likewise, we can work with oil and wetar systems. As you know, when you put oil and water together, they don't mix, but through self-assembly we can get a nice oil droplet to form, and we can actually use this as a body for our artificial organism or for our protocell, as you will see later. So that's just forming some body suftf, right? Some arthiuectrces. What about the other aspects of lvinig systems? So we came up with this protocell mdeol here that I'm showing. We started with a natural oirccnurg clay called mlrtilnitoomnoe. This is natural from the eomnnniervt, this clay. It forms a surface that is, say, chemically active. It could run a masoeitlbm on it. Certain kind of molecules like to associate with the clay. For example, in this case, RNA, shown in red — this is a relative of DNA, it's an informational molecule — it can come along and it starts to asacitose with the surface of this clay. This structure, then, can organize the formation of a membrane boundary around itself, so it can make a body of liquid molecules around itself, and that's shwon in green here on this micrograph. So just through self-assembly, mixing things together in the lab, we can come up with, say, a metabolic surface with some informational molecules attached inside of this membrane body, right?

Open Cloze

Likewise, we can work with oil and _____ systems. As you know, when you put oil and water together, they don't mix, but through self-assembly we can get a nice oil droplet to form, and we can actually use this as a body for our artificial organism or for our protocell, as you will see later. So that's just forming some body _____, right? Some _____________. What about the other aspects of ______ systems? So we came up with this protocell _____ here that I'm showing. We started with a natural _________ clay called _______________. This is natural from the ___________, this clay. It forms a surface that is, say, chemically active. It could run a __________ on it. Certain kind of molecules like to associate with the clay. For example, in this case, RNA, shown in red — this is a relative of DNA, it's an informational molecule — it can come along and it starts to _________ with the surface of this clay. This structure, then, can organize the formation of a membrane boundary around itself, so it can make a body of liquid molecules around itself, and that's _____ in green here on this micrograph. So just through self-assembly, mixing things together in the lab, we can come up with, say, a metabolic surface with some informational molecules attached inside of this membrane body, right?

Solution

  1. stuff
  2. occurring
  3. architectures
  4. shown
  5. metabolism
  6. environment
  7. associate
  8. water
  9. living
  10. model
  11. montmorillonite

Original Text

Likewise, we can work with oil and water systems. As you know, when you put oil and water together, they don't mix, but through self-assembly we can get a nice oil droplet to form, and we can actually use this as a body for our artificial organism or for our protocell, as you will see later. So that's just forming some body stuff, right? Some architectures. What about the other aspects of living systems? So we came up with this protocell model here that I'm showing. We started with a natural occurring clay called montmorillonite. This is natural from the environment, this clay. It forms a surface that is, say, chemically active. It could run a metabolism on it. Certain kind of molecules like to associate with the clay. For example, in this case, RNA, shown in red — this is a relative of DNA, it's an informational molecule — it can come along and it starts to associate with the surface of this clay. This structure, then, can organize the formation of a membrane boundary around itself, so it can make a body of liquid molecules around itself, and that's shown in green here on this micrograph. So just through self-assembly, mixing things together in the lab, we can come up with, say, a metabolic surface with some informational molecules attached inside of this membrane body, right?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
living systems 10
artificial life 3
oil droplet 3
protocell ab 3
building blocks 2
chemical metabolism 2
protocell starts 2
lifelike behavior 2
simple system 2
diverse mixture 2
chemical bonds 2
break chemical 2
pure chemicals 2
lifelike properties 2
primordial ooze 2
black tar 2

Important Words

  1. active
  2. architectures
  3. artificial
  4. aspects
  5. associate
  6. attached
  7. body
  8. boundary
  9. called
  10. case
  11. chemically
  12. clay
  13. dna
  14. droplet
  15. environment
  16. form
  17. formation
  18. forming
  19. forms
  20. green
  21. informational
  22. kind
  23. lab
  24. liquid
  25. living
  26. membrane
  27. metabolic
  28. metabolism
  29. micrograph
  30. mix
  31. mixing
  32. model
  33. molecule
  34. molecules
  35. montmorillonite
  36. natural
  37. nice
  38. occurring
  39. oil
  40. organism
  41. organize
  42. protocell
  43. put
  44. red
  45. relative
  46. rna
  47. run
  48. showing
  49. shown
  50. started
  51. starts
  52. structure
  53. stuff
  54. surface
  55. systems
  56. water
  57. work