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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

#231

Post by derektank »

Retric wrote: post #183
Conscat wrote: post #170

Earlier 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.

>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

Who do you believe should be the gatekeeper here? Why can’t the scientist and the news outlets be trusted to make the decision about whether to publish or not themselves? Why can’t the general public be trusted to evaluate the quality of the news outlets they read?

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

#232

Post by geoduck14 »

wyldberry wrote: post #217
Lerc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody knows how another person will see something with their eyes. What appears to be obvious and revolutionary to one person may not be so to all. Review is precisely to protect against the importance and accuracy of a work being decided by the person who is most invested in it being so.

Whenever i sit down to read research, I remind myself of Lockheed Martin reading the USSR published research[0] on how electromagnetic waves scatter off of surfaces, and using that to fuel the initial stealth technology. The leading theory being that the USSR didn't recognize how brilliant and revolutionary ability these calculations were. Just because I can't see the immediate brilliance, doesn't mean it is not bril…

There is a similar story with the discovery of buckey-balls. A researcher at University of Houston had data that demonstrated buckey-balls were created, but he didn't fully understand what he was looking at. Then a researcher at Rice saw the data and recognized c-60 was being created, so he bought the data and the process and then "invented" carbon balls

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

#235

Post by userulluipeste »

JanJedryszek wrote: post #184

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

The current model, of a cell that cannot live on its own and cannot evolve (being too far from "edge of chaos") is what will be most useful for bio-engineering. Yes, we need the mechanism for creating cells, and the newfound division for a minimum viable cell is paramount. But, we also need for ways to control its reproduction, be it as to die out on its own after few generations due to degraded protein build-up, or (in the best case scenario) due to some other built in mechanism. Otherwise, expect (at least) some amount of scaremongering, about playing fast and loose with things that may get out of hand. The best thing is to have this kind of cell template that could somehow be augmented with whatever additional plug-in functionality (useful for us, case by case) and then get it produced in the needed quantities and not more. The research direction that makes sense is for ways to add such "mission specific" functions to this synthetic cell and ways to create the first generation as efficiently as possible, at large scale. That's it.

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

#236

Post by Retric »

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #230
Retric wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Why do you think the more critical scientists are more correct?

I am not qualified to make a judgement here, the point is following the process is better than jumping the gun on principle.

It literally doesn’t matter if it’s eventually considered groundbreaking research or not, jumping the gun is a bad idea.

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

#238

Post by noosphr »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #223
noosphr wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#239

Post by [deleted] »

noosphr wrote: post #218
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.

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…

[deleted]

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

#240

Post by jibal »

MarkusQ wrote: post #227
jibal wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, The IAU definition does not say that. You and others are confusing the definition of a planet with its application to planets in the solar system (and thus to Pluto) -- IAU Resolution 5A: Definition of a Planet in the Solar System.

The IAU of course does not assert that only planets in the solar system are planets ... that would be ridiculous, and the interpretation of the IAU's stance as being so ridiculous is ridiculous and then some.

https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/planets/what-is-a-plan...

"The definition of a planet adopted by the IAU says a planet must do three things:

It must orbit a star (in our cosmic neighborhood, the Sun).

It must be big enough to have enough gravity to force it into a spherical shape.

It must be big enough that its gravity has cleared away any other objects of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun."

https://www.iau.org/IAU/Science/What-we-do/Pluto-and-the-Dev...

"More generally, a planet:

a. orbits its host star, just as the Earth and Jupiter orbit the Sun,

b. is large enough to be mostly round, and

c. must have an important influence on the orbital stability of the other objects in its neighbourhood."

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