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For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

quantamagazine.org

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Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#121

Post by feoren »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #114
dbingham wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is "whatabboutism" which is a logical fallacy. Someone doesn't have to talk about the climate impacts of cars every time they talk about the climate impacts of AI. Both have climate impacts, independently of each other, and we should be dealing with the climate impacts of both simultaneously. Regardless, don't assume the person you are talking to isn't consistent. Peruse my personal blog and you will see that I,…

Someone doesn't have to talk about the climate impacts of cars every time they talk about the climate impacts of AI. Actually they do, because the best way to get cars off the road is to replace many if not most of their occupants with AI. Private ownership of cars is not the problem. The assumption that people have to drive all over the place to get stuff done is the problem. Let's work on that.

> the best way to get cars off the road is to replace many if not most of their occupants with AI.

I'm so confused by this. Instead of one person driving a car to the store and parking, now the car is driving itself to the store with one person in it, dropping them off, and then either parking, or driving itself around more, back to the house or to a distant parking facility. In crowded cities, the car is just going to drive around the block empty for an hour instead of paying $12 for parking. Single-occupancy vehicles are a big problem now; I don't understand how introducing a bunch of zero-occupancy vehicles are an improvement on that? It seems very obvious to me self-driving cars are going to significantly increase the total number of miles driven every day in the world.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#122

Post by NetMageSCW »

Zambyte wrote: post #76
dbingham wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is that those stories are rooted very much in the failures of human systems that we see every day. They are us imagining what could go wrong based on what has gone wrong and is going wrong. It would be a lot easier to set those warnings aside if we didn't have so many examples of the very things they warn about happening in real life. We currently have a system where private individuals can fund pri…

It's important to emphasize that cars are the leading source of carbon emissions. Anyone fighting against AI on the basis of climate change should be fighting for safe and reliable alternatives to driving everywhere.

That’s just wrong. Transportation is 24% of carbon emissions with 18% road transportation and about 10% of that from cars. Electricity and heat production is the largest source of carbon emissions.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#123

Post by Maxion »

twothreeone wrote: post #99
merksittich wrote: post #54

Science News has a more balanced take, with additional quotes from peers. > Some have also grumbled about Adamala’s efforts to draw attention to the work, which she says was rejected by Cell after one reviewer said SpudCells were not real biology. She then sent the 190-page manuscript to journalists, under embargo, even before she had uploaded it to the preprint server bioRxiv, where her colleagues could read and ass…

The problem is this: as an academic you tend to know the reviewer landscape within your field. You have seen this happen to a colleague before, they submitted a paper, it had interesting results - it was forcefully rejected by 1 or 2 extremely negative reviewers. The publication gets delayed, you need to wait another 6 months to get the next set of reviews. Meanwhile, some "colleague" from another lab publishes nearl…

My wife has had numerous papers rejected because the reviewer belonged to a competing lab. Took a few tries and a request to exclude a certain reviewer and hey presto! published!

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#124

Post by dnautics »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #7

“This was where the field had been stuck for some time. Researchers before Adamala had figured out different ways to feed and grow synthetic cells and to replicate their DNA. But cell division is a different beast. A typical cell reorganizes its cytoskeleton — a network of protein fibers that provide structural support — to halve its DNA and split. Synthetic biologists could not figure out how to get their cells to u…

without criticising the work (its very cool and a very important first step) they haven't figured out division yet, which is kind of important.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#125

Post by petcat »

The people behind it:

https://biotic.org/

> Biotic is a public-benefit nonprofit research organization developing chemically and functionally defined synthetic cells. Biotic's mission is to responsibly enable and steward foundational advances in bioengineering. Our goal is to ensure that all people and the planet benefit from world‑leading biotechnologies soon enough to matter. We conduct and support public‑benefit research ranging from foundational science to how people interact with biotechnology.

It looks like this particular research is conducted at the University of Minnesota

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#126

Post by bouchard »

vintagedave wrote: post #102
bouchard wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “It’s an unusual way of doing things,” says Kerstin Göpfrich, a synthetic biologist at Heidelberg University. That's being kind; it's a complete overreaction, simply put.

In fairness, it's a workaround against something that likely should not have happened. Problems require creative (aka unusual) solutions.

Rejections from journals are not uncommon and sometimes it's for somewhat questionable reasons.

Uploading the manuscript to a preprint server and/or submitting to another journal, which Adamala is doing/planning to do, is the normal response.

Sending it to journalists beforehand is what I consider an overreaction.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#127

Post by dnautics »

burnte wrote: post #3

Interesting that this is led by the same Dr. Kate Adamala who ended the right-handed-proteins experiment a couple of years ago. Given how close she was I'm not surprised she's made this work.

the left handed life thing is the only thing that makes me wonder about Adamala's judgement... there zero plausible mechanism for left handed life to succesfully compete.

in case you didn't know, your immune system WILL detect left handed pathogens, possibly more aggressively, and two of the body's mechanisms for fighting infection -- fever and ozonolysis -- are distinctly achiral

Arguably we should push for mirror life for industrial purposes FASTER because biocontrol is easier (they got nothing to eat) and lab escape is far less likely

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#128

Post by LeifCarrotson »

hparadiz wrote: post #92
Aachen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exoplanets also aren't planets. Some things just seem to have definitions with a history that get applied to new discoveries that don't fall within the definition. Distinguishing random rocks in space from planets was done by requiring planets to orbit around the sun, and so planets elsewhere cannot be called planets no matter that it's 1:1 the same thing. Biology probably has a similar history of trying to draw a li…

> Exoplanets also aren't planets. Imagine writing this.

What they meant when they said "planets" was the 8 (previously 9, previously to that 8, previously 7...) known and named planets in our own solar system. A hypothetical "Journal of Planets" that was actually about solar system astronomy wouldn't necessarily have known what to do with a new paper about 51 Pegasi b published 30 years ago. They're thinking "when we said planets, we actually always meant solar system planets, it just never came up until now".

The reviewer of this paper is saying that by biology they always meant naturally evolved cellular biology, not synthetic biology - there's just never been an example of the latter before.

I think the take is wrong, the receiving journals should be excited to expand their scope rather than frustratedly redefine their scope more narrowly, but definitions and categorization are hard.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#129

Post by arjie »

senkora wrote: post #107
arjie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, mechanically constructing life would be absolutely stupendous for science. The real tragedy of modern sci-fi is that everyone read the books and decided it was reality. “Penicillin?! A poison from fungus that kills living cells?! Haven’t you played the sci fi game The Last of Us?” Stories are stories, man. Story-logic is biased towards interesting tales. And “discovery from the natural world turned to human aims…

> Stories are stories, man. Story-logic is biased towards interesting tales. Also known as the fallacy of “generalizing from fictional evidence”. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logica...

Hilarious. Everything that I can think of has been already Yuddocumented. I am but a minor replicant LLM of the man. https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Story-Logic_Bias

I don't spend any time on LW but perhaps that is because I'll have to face that all my ideas have already been explored more eloquently by him and the communities he's part of.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#130

Post by NuclearPM »

bouchard wrote: post #126
vintagedave wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, it's a workaround against something that likely should not have happened. Problems require creative (aka unusual) solutions.

Rejections from journals are not uncommon and sometimes it's for somewhat questionable reasons. Uploading the manuscript to a preprint server and/or submitting to another journal, which Adamala is doing/planning to do, is the normal response. Sending it to journalists beforehand is what I consider an overreaction.

Why would it be an overreaction?
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