| Sumario: | The origin and the nature of life are still a mystery to scientists, although they understand the mechanisms of life in extraordinary detail. Artificial life, in the form of computer programs that mimic some or all of life's properties, is being used to explore the internal processes that give life to an organism. Artificial life can also help scientists study the processes of replication, competition, and evolution. The contributions to the technological search for life's origin made by anastrophic change master Stuart Kauffman of the Santa Fe Institute, RNA researchers Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado and Sidney Altman of Yale, RNA replicators Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues at the Massachusetts General Hospital, biomorph inventor Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, and electronic ecosystem Tierra developer Thomas Ray of the University of Delaware are discussed.
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