11–20 of 22 posts
We don’t even know what like, 20% of the genes do. Simulations are neat, but they miss a lot of underlying biology that actually makes an impact on engineering. One of my favorite papers was published 40 years ago on this topic https://pitp.ias.edu/sites/pitp/files/morowitz-completeness_...
Have you ever wondered how life’s most basic units, cells, operate? As a programmer and cell biology enthusiast, I embarked on a journey to simulate the simplest cell using TypeScript.
We don’t even know what like, 20% of the genes do. Simulations are neat, but they miss a lot of underlying biology that actually makes an impact on engineering. One of my favorite papers was published 40 years ago on this topic https://pitp.ias.edu/sites/pitp/files/morowitz-completeness_...
If you read the article you'd know that that's exactly why organisms such as JCVI-syn3A were created, where we know the (or at least some) function of 80% of the genes.
We don’t even know what like, 20% of the genes do. Simulations are neat, but they miss a lot of underlying biology that actually makes an impact on engineering. One of my favorite papers was published 40 years ago on this topic https://pitp.ias.edu/sites/pitp/files/morowitz-completeness_...
https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.p...
For a bit more background, there's been a couple of posts on the "minimal cell" concept on Derek Lowe's venerable In the Pipeline blog. This 2016 post [1] talks about the initial development of the JCVI-syn3.0 cell; this 2023 post [2] goes over a paper that studied the evolutionary dynamics of these minimal cells.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/smallest-viable-ge...
Fascinating stuff, thanks! A recent workshop with recorded talks on such cells https://www.jcvi.org/events/minimal-cell-workshop I am wondering if other researchers can procure or produce these cells or these are rather a know-how of JCVI?
I gave a talk at that workshop! (I’m making the 61 codon version of JCVI-Syn3a) You can get the cells as a researcher, but basically forget about it for a commercial user or hobbyist. They’re also annoying as hell to grow. I’m trying to synthesize it from scratch for the precise reason of freeing it from MTAs (material transfer agreements)
We don’t even know what like, 20% of the genes do. Simulations are neat, but they miss a lot of underlying biology that actually makes an impact on engineering. One of my favorite papers was published 40 years ago on this topic https://pitp.ias.edu/sites/pitp/files/morowitz-completeness_...
If you read the article you'd know that that's exactly why organisms such as JCVI-syn3A were created, where we know the (or at least some) function of 80% of the genes.
Out of the 100 or so unknown genes we had/have, only like 3 unknowns were actually used for research. Such is science sometimes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I gave a talk at that workshop! (I’m making the 61 codon version of JCVI-Syn3a) You can get the cells as a researcher, but basically forget about it for a commercial user or hobbyist. They’re also annoying as hell to grow. I’m trying to synthesize it from scratch for the precise reason of freeing it from MTAs (material transfer agreements)
Sounds like you're doing good work! Out of curiosity, can you give a layman's explanation of what makes them hard to grow?
I wonder if it would be possible to simplify the task further, by removing cell reproduction processes? As far as I understand, an "immortal" non-replicating cell does not exist in nature, but there is nothing that prevents an artificial one from existing, especially if it has ways to repair cellular damage.