How Biologists Are Creating Life-Like Cells from Scratch

Re:How Biologists Are Creating Life-Like Cells from Scratch by oldandtired on Saturday November 10, 2018 @12:40AM (#18420127)

When you get the chance have a listen to some of the discussions about organic chemical processes occurring in cells by Dr James Tour. From an engineering and manufacturing point of view, the processes that occur in a cell are far beyond what we are able to achieve in any of our engineering and manufacturing processes.

It is not about simulating processes, it is about doing those processes.

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Re:How Biologists Are Creating Life-Like Cells from Scratch by Retric on Saturday November 10, 2018 @10:12AM (#18421598)

We can manufacture DNA from 'scratch'. That means as long as we have the sequence we can largely use those same processes. Sure, we don't necessarily understand what's going on, but neither did our ancestors you first manufactured steel etc etc.

Protean folding is very complex to simulate. But, so is even a hydrogen atom starting from quantum mechanic equations. Saying we can abstract away that hydrogen atom does not mean the complexity disappears. Further from a QM standpoint protean folding is really slow, it's a complex dance like plate tectonics even if it's blindingly fast from our viewpoint.

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