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Are we close to recreating life?

Check out this article.

Throughout our summer exploration of identity and truth we have discussed our past as a species and how we evolved from a primordial combination of elements that combined to form our DNA, we pondered our present condition and how we use our intelligence to gather facts about our world, and thanks to Don, we got an up close look at the actual building blocks of life. This inspired me to think about where we are headed in the future.
I came across what I believe is the most exciting recent discovery between computers and living organisms. The ongoing work with C. elegans (microscopic worms) at Vienna University of Technology  has produced a new result. They have taught a computer program with the same structure as a C. elegans brain a new trick. These organisms have the most basic neural system at only 302 neurons versus the 100 Billion plus neurons in a human brain.
I thought back to last summer when we studied the experiment at Cornell University where scientists were trying to re-create the proteins and nucleic acids that formed the first life.

Carl Sagan covers that here:

It is an interesting experiment however there are many obstacles to overcome since the early Earth was much different than today which may confound the experiment in unknown ways. For instance, there was less force of gravity hundreds of millions of years ago, there were most certainly variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, and the planet’s atmosphere would be unrecognizable as plant life is what produces our current abundance of oxygen.
While this particular experiment has yet to yield usable results since our oxygen rich atmosphere is much different than that of early Earth, this study with C. elegans makes me think that there may be multiple ways of artificially recreating organic life. Of course, the research is ongoing but the fact the scientists have taught this “program” a new trick without new inputs could be the start of something big. It makes me wonder at what point in time was there an event that created life on earth? Was it the moment a spark of electricity from a lightning storm jolted a mix of acids and proteins? Or were bacteria brought here on an obscure fragment of a comet from elsewhere in the universe?  We may never have the precise answer to these big questions but if we could construct an exact computerized map of a human’s neural network could it behave the same way? Would we call it life?
There is already a robust field of artificial intelligence or machine learning that we are using to solve all kinds of real-world problems. These programs are literally learning new skills without new programming and teaching themselves new skills. Are there differences between machine learning and the C. elegans learning? I think only time will tell, but as computer power increases exponentially, we may one day be able to answer these questions. We may find that there are different forms of life than we first thought possible.

This related article explores using the same technology to duplicate the human brain.