What is the Simplest Life Form?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

Continuing the discussion from Hunt's 2007 Critique of Axe:

@colewd

That’s not very close. All bacteria we have now are the product of 3.5 billion years of evolution. You might as well claim that the first human civilizations had build BMW’s in order to survive

You are speculating. Show a simpler life form is possible. This is what the Venter lab is trying to do and they are claiming between 400 and 500 proteins required for a living organism.

As for the simplest cell? We should expect that the first cell was far more simple than anything we find today, which has accumulated a lot of interlocking complexity (like Rube-Goldberg machine) by the Mullerian Two-Step.

For this reason, Venter’s group is not determining the simplest organism possible. In extant organism, that would likely be viruses. In the distant past, we have no clear idea at all of how simple or complex that first cell might have been.