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For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
221–230 of 323 posts
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#222Science 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…
I thought the NY Times article was pretty good, they had some nice illustrations.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/01/science/spudc...
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#223Earlier 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.
It's an over reaction if you have a decade to argue with morons. I've had papers sit in peer review for two years, get rejected, then when they are finally published the other editors of the journal that rejected them came crawling in asking for the next paper in the series and promising the front page. Worse they ran a news story about our paper _in the journal that rejected it_ saying how groundbreaking it was. The…
As an outside observer, it does seem that the whole process is tedious, capricious, and corrupt. No wonder academia is crumbling - it deserves to, and it needs to be replaced with a new, better system.
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#224Scientists seem really busy these days creating synthetic life: advances in AI, human eggs from stem cells and now this - synthetic cells. I somehow feel they are inspired by the Alien movies.
They are inspired by transhumanist agenda and corresponding VC backing.
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crazy that a Cell reviewer would claim synthetic biology is not biology
My paper demonstrating a side channel attack on RSA via hyperthreading was rejected from the crypto preprint archive on the basis that it was "not cryptography". (Reviewers at J.Crypto subsequently sat on it for a year and then suggested I submit it to a journal on CPU microarchitecture instead.) Novel research is uniquely susceptible to "cool but it's not part of our field", because that critique is entirely correct…
Looking over Journal of Cryptology, they appear to be a theory journal. So an attack on an implementation, based on hardware probably doesn't interest them as much.
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#226> “It’s a big step forward to this holy grail of making a living thing out of dead components,” said Sijbren Otto, a systems chemist at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry in the Netherlands who was not involved in the work. That is the holy grail? I get that the goal is to "grow" biofuels, plastic, fertilizer, drugs, or whatever else we can imagine. But is that worth the many apocalyptic sci-fi outcomes we can ima…
> That is the holy grail? At one end we're creating artificial life , the other we are creating artificial intelligence . We're coming at everything we as the human race have known for millennia from both ends, simultaneously. We're recreating that, from scratch. That is absolutely fucking wild. Ironically this "holy" grail will end up being the thing that finally puts religious creation myths in their place (i.e. as…
> What a time to be alive.
May well turn into a time to better be dead.
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#227Earlier 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. That is flatly wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet "An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System."
The GP post's point was that, logical as this would be, the IAU definition explicitly states that planets are "in the Solar System". So no, exoplanets are exoplanets, not planets. And Pluto isn't an example of either.
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#228Earlier 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.
It's an over reaction if you have a decade to argue with morons. I've had papers sit in peer review for two years, get rejected, then when they are finally published the other editors of the journal that rejected them came crawling in asking for the next paper in the series and promising the front page. Worse they ran a news story about our paper _in the journal that rejected it_ saying how groundbreaking it was. The…
> I've had papers sit in peer review for two years, get rejected
And for people who aren't in academia, lets just say the unspoken part: While one or more of the reviewers are actively trying to replicate the work so they can beat you to submission after rejecting you.
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#229Earlier 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?
Too common, unfortunately. Publishing and getting public credit like this are considered high stakes (which justify, or at least make some sense of occurring despicableness). There is much too much infighting over nothing (compared to the money in the corporate world).
Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would only be effective if the significance of this work is clear. They certainly felt this message needed to reach people, and that it did work makes it self evident they were probably right.
Journalists believing what you tell them says nothing about if the underlying work is actually significant. The legacy of bad science being picked up is why this is a bad idea, even you personally don’t think it’s an issue the risk reward isn’t about just you.
There are other quotes that do think it’s significant. Why do you think the more critical scientists are more correct?
> John Glass, a synthetic biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, Calif., who was not involved in the study. “It is dazzling that she has put these things all together,” he said.
> “We’re going to remember this moment,” said Roseanna Zia, a computational biologist at the University of Missouri who was not involved in the project.
Maybe you prefer scientists who put their money where their mouth is (even if that’s a conflict of interest)
> When Dr. Adamala showed SpudCell to Dr. Endy… (a synthetic biologist at Stanford University) … last year, he was so awestruck that he decided to help her found Biotic, the nonprofit organization intended to create a community of SpudCell researchers. “I’m pouring my life’s work into this,” Dr. Endy said.