How Biologists Are Creating Life-Like Cells from Scratch

Re:How Biologists Are Creating Life-Like Cells from Scratch by inciampati on Friday November 09, 2018 @03:53AM (#18413187)

The article speculates that it will be hard to get these synthetic cellular systems to evolve, even if they manage to self replicate and survive given their initial rational design. I don't see this as a problem if they really can be made self sustaining. If the cells replicate then they are already implementing an evolutionary process. We just need to be sure that mutations can arise due to replication error or DNA damage. But if they don't replicate then human designers mediate their evolution. This just seems so straightforward to me. Am I missing something?

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Re:How Biologists Are Creating Life-Like Cells from Scratch by lisper on Friday November 09, 2018 @11:26AM (#18415568)

If they don't replicate, they aren't alive. Replication is the defining characteristic of life.

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Re:How Biologists Are Creating Life-Like Cells from Scratch by undersuit on Friday November 09, 2018 @02:28PM (#18417151)

If we're going to split hairs like that then blood cells and the neurons of some species of adult fairy wasps are not alive.

And if you response is that the rest of the organism fulfills the self replication process through sexual reproduction, then why can't these cells being assisted by an outside process like the splitting chip be considered alive in whole like an animal is?

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Re:How Biologists Are Creating Life-Like Cells from Scratch by lisper on Friday November 09, 2018 @02:35PM (#18417193)

> blood cells and the neurons of some species of adult fairy wasps are not alive

That's right, they aren't. You hair and fingernails aren't alive either. Nor is your clothing despite the fact that that too is part of the human phenotype. [1]

> why can't these cells being assisted by an outside process like the splitting chip be considered alive in whole like an animal is?

Because the splitting chip isn't produced by the cells, it's produced by humans. Take the humans away and the whole process comes to a grinding halt.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype

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