
‘Minimal’ cell raises stakes in race to harness synthetic life (2016) - headalgorithm
https://www.nature.com/news/minimal-cell-raises-stakes-in-race-to-harness-synthetic-life-1.19633
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umvi
I am very inexperienced with biotech. Please correct me if I'm wrong:

"synthetic" in this case means the DNA is extracted from one cell, sliced and
diced to get a desired genome, and then injected into an existing cell to
hijack its offspring to use the new "hacked" DNA. Is that accurate?

In my mind "synthetic" means starting from basic chemical compounds and
building from the ground up to create a desired molecule.

This seems more like if you took a big box of hard drive parts (cannibalized
from existing computers), cobbled together a working hard drive, and then
stuck it into a computer and then claimed you've "synthesized" a computer.

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antonjs
There are different conceptions of what counts as a synthetic cell, but in
this work the DNA is indeed synthetic. They designed their desired genome
sequence on a computer, and synthesized the DNA by chemically printing it into
segments, and then assembling those segments together into a complete genome.
There are commercial providers that will synthesize DNA from sequence
information [1].

The actual design itself was heavily based on the genome of a natural
organism, M. mycoides. They sequenced its genome and built an experimental
dataset of which genes were essential and which weren't, then designed and
printed a genome using the native sequences of just the essential genes.

Work on synthetic cells is now moving in a few directions, including designing
the genome from scratch and building cellular or cell-like chassis to 'run'
the genome. [2] Even in designing a genome from scratch, however, we would
still be using proteins sourced from nature, because our ability to design
proteins is still very limited. One way to think of this is that the
biological world provides a massive pre-designed parts catalogue, and then we
can compose those parts in a synthetic genome.

I'm a graduate student working on building a cell [3], happy to answer any
other questions you might have.

[1] Like Twist, [https://twistbioscience.com/](https://twistbioscience.com/)

[2]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07289-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07289-x)

[3] [http://buildacell.io](http://buildacell.io)

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akvadrako
How long do you think it will be before we have a bio IDE and protein library
that's good enough for a programmer to start creating their own living
organisms at home?

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callesgg
Hopefully never think of the implications, but in reality probably in a few
years/decades

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raiflip
This might just be fear-mongering, but what is the potential that someone uses
some take home CRISPR kit and creates a super virus? Considering the existence
of psychopaths in the human population, this sort of technology seems like
something that should be kept under tight wraps.

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naasking
Most mutations are dead ends. Consider CRISPR to be an affordable scanning
tunneling microscope-like device that you can use to move atoms around fairly
easily. Now consider how hard it would be to take an x86 CPU and add a new
instruction or change some existing instructions using that device. Most
changes you make simply won't produce a functional CPU.

You could do it entirely by accident, but it's very unlikely.

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csense
Why not let evolution help you, just grow a huge number of the currently
"minimal" cell, sequence them all, and then repeat the experiment by
replicating any mutant with a smaller genome as the new "minimal" cell?

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kolinko
It would be difficult to sequence millions/billions of cells to find the one
with the shortest code. Also, a cell with minimal genetic code may not
necessarily have the best survival skills, so it may die off if it's in the
same setting as other ones.

You would need to deliver some sort of an evolutionary pressure to the cells
to shed any unnecessary genetic material.

