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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

#201

Post by PowerElectronix »

dyauspitr wrote: post #194
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #78

You stumble upon a news article from 2226. You read it to see who, between Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, won the AI race. Instead, your learn about Biotic. It's now the leading polity in the solar system and its environs. It bought Alphabet, OpenAI and Anthropic in a single day back in 2084. Humans are no longer desired. Their reproduction is capped to an optimal minimum assuring the survival of the species as a reli…

Humans have the power to self reproduce though. I don’t believe anything short of an engineered disease could wipe out all of humanity at this point and it has to happen soon before we figure out how to fix all of our problems using genetic engineering.

To note, we are already solving our problems through genetic engineering... Only one generation at a time.

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

#202

Post by jibal »

ben_w wrote: post #159
hparadiz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about edge cases like asteroids or planetoids or dwarf planets. I'm talking about actual planets. Like a gas giant orbiting a star. It's obviously a planet even if it's not orbiting Sol.

It's perfectly coherent to argue that gas giants should count failed stars rather than as planets, given the boundary between them is under debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISE_0855%E2%88%920714

It's perfectly irrelevant to the thread.

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

#203

Post by tete »

FloorEgg wrote: post #174
bomewish wrote: post #173

The “from scratch” is doing a lot of work here!

I don't think I had ever heard the phrase "x is doing a lot of work here" until about a year ago, from Claude, which seems to say it's lot. Out of curiosity, do you use Claude a lot and did you pick up the saying from it? Are you Claude? Or just a coincidence?

"doing a lot of work" and "doing a lot of the heavy-lifting" are and have been somewhat common on reddit, etc. I guess it's a great source for LLMs for weighting, because the weighting is largely done for you via upvotes. Something search engines love as well.

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

#204

Post by jibal »

dyauspitr wrote: post #194
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #78

You stumble upon a news article from 2226. You read it to see who, between Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, won the AI race. Instead, your learn about Biotic. It's now the leading polity in the solar system and its environs. It bought Alphabet, OpenAI and Anthropic in a single day back in 2084. Humans are no longer desired. Their reproduction is capped to an optimal minimum assuring the survival of the species as a reli…

Humans have the power to self reproduce though. I don’t believe anything short of an engineered disease could wipe out all of humanity at this point and it has to happen soon before we figure out how to fix all of our problems using genetic engineering.

A high enough wet bulb temperature can wipe out all of humanity.

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

#205

Post by tete »

deadbabe wrote: post #59
vhantz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From cells dividing to human generation there is a single step. Similarly a program that runs on a computer, where its only interactions are strings of numbers is the same as an entity having to interact with the world.

Interesting, we should be able to have LLMs generate full genetic code or Inpaint into existing code that can be installed into a cell as DNA and have it divide out into any custom creature. We could launch these custom bacteria in stasis to planets around the galaxy and seed life everywhere.

You should be able. Go for it.

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

#206

Post by JanJedryszek »

nashashmi wrote: post #190
JanJedryszek wrote: post #184

I;m one of the co-founders, AMA :)

What are the implications for nanobots with this kind of innovation: Artificial cell division recreating itself in 2? Is this a future endeavor of this tech?

Great question - what we built isn't a "nanobot" in the Drexlerian sense (a tiny engineered machine assembling things atom by atom). It's a cell, it runs onn molecular machines like ribosomes, membranes, and enzymes. The self-replication and division you're picturing comes from that biological machinery copying and dividing, not from a mechanical device building a second copy of itself. So on your specific question: division is very much a core goal of the synthetic cell field, and getting a built-from-defined-parts system to grow and divide reliably on its own is one of the big open problems ahead of us. What SpudCell demonstrates is assembling something cell-like from well-defined components. Where this does connect to the "programmable matter" dream is that if you can engineer a cell from the ground up, you can in principle program what it makes and does, using biology's own manufacturing stack rather than trying to invent a mechanical one from scratch. That's a slower and messier path than the sci-fi version, but it's the one that actually runs on physics we think we understand.. hope it makes sense!

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

#207

Post by jibal »

FloorEgg wrote: post #174
bomewish wrote: post #173

The “from scratch” is doing a lot of work here!

I don't think I had ever heard the phrase "x is doing a lot of work here" until about a year ago, from Claude, which seems to say it's lot. Out of curiosity, do you use Claude a lot and did you pick up the saying from it? Are you Claude? Or just a coincidence?

It's an ancient phrase.

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

#208

Post by IAmBroom »

im3w1l wrote: post #191
bouchard wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have something so truly revolutionary that everyone can see with their own two eyes how awesome it is you don't have to rely on a middleman to bless it. "Ok your loss"

"everyone" is overly constrained.

"The intended audience" is what is needed, and absolutely does require a middleman to publish it.

No blessing required.

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

#209

Post by IAmBroom »

jschveibinz wrote: post #147
Maxion wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

That is despicable behavior from a professional. How common is this in academia?

As common as pedophilia in priests: IOW, despite anyone's "feel" or "gut impression", probably the exact same distribution as in the general population.

Nothing about belief in the RC church nor education of the priests filters for pedophilia, despite lots of loose opinions. Priests, plumbers, and people who live in Scarsdale are all generally equally likely to be pedophiles. (There are meaningful filters, like man versus woman.)

Nothing about pursuing an academic career selects for or filters against dishonesty. I've seen astounding dishonesty in published papers; I've seen admirable examples of morality as well.

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

#210

Post by IAmBroom »

dnautics wrote: post #124
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.

Lots of missing steps before it is "created life". Which the researchers admit in the very start.
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