Feature

Life from scratch

Relaunching biology from the beginning

By Charles Petit

- More than 2 years ago

A short stroll from Boston’s Charles River, behind a sheath of blue glass on the seventh floor of a Harvard Medical School research building, Jack Szostak is getting set to replay the greatest event on Earth.

LIFE FROM SCRATCH By creating vesicles containing proto-genetic material (depicted in this computer graphic), researchers are trying to watch life pop into existence.