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What exactly are your criteria for a "synthetic cell"?

• nsxwolf 11y ago
  The cell itself being synthetic, not just the genome. Not a cell from nature that's had its genome removed.
  • kyberias 11y ago
    You should realize that it's effectively the same thing. The bacterial genome synthesizes everything in the cell.
    • nsxwolf 11y ago
      Is that true? You can take a naked genome, and do something to it, and a cell will materialize? With a cell wall and cytoplasm all its mitochondria and everything?
      • tantalor 11y ago
        Yeah the "do something" black box includes a cell replication step. Given genome, 1. Replace genome in host cell 2. Replicate host cell 3. Output "materialized" cell
      • kyberias 11y ago
        Well, they had to have a receptive cell to bootstrap this thing, that is true. Yet, since we're talking about mycoplasma here, they don't have a cell wall (only plasma membrane) nor mitochondria (only eukaryotes have those). The new minimal genome really has to synthesize everything needed by the cell to grow and divide.
    • tdaltonc 11y ago
      They're not. If you put a synthetic genome in to a cell that's just had the genome removed, that's very different then starting with pure molecules and building something that will boot.
      • berntb 11y ago
        But... at every cell division, two half cells will be built. So after twenty divisions, there will (on average) be a millionth part of the original cell in every descendant. I don't really see the point in creating all organelles outside a cell. When we copy the functionality chemically, the results are very different. (Air planes not flapping their wings, etc.)
      • jfoutz 11y ago
        Nothing does that though. Old electric cars were built from donor cars, rip the ICE from a Volkswagen or something and then put in batteries and electric motor. This is worse though, you're not building a car, you're building a cell factory. It's much more like bootstrapping a compiler. Now, it's possible to hand code the assembly to make your low quality compiler, that's just good enough to compile a subset of your language that'll let you bootstrap the full language. That's rough though. It's much quicker to just use C or something to implement the first version of the compiler, then implement the target language compiler in the target language. I agree, it would be cool to be able to snap together molecules to build structures. The best way to do that today is to use cells to make the molecules and snap them together. We just don't have little Mems devices (or whatever) to do that. Especially not in bulk. Someday, we'll have a device that's not a cell that can do what you want - it just doesn't exist yet. Cells are almost a magic cheat code, giving us access to building stuff we can't build any other way.
        • EGreg 11y ago
          The guy is talking about replicating abiogenesis like it "happened the first time". You can't use sky hooks after all. Where are your cranes? :-)
    • AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      It doesn't start off as being the same thing. In particular, the new genome might create a very different cell wall than the one from the original bacterium.
      • kyberias 11y ago
        The species used here (mycoplasma) does not have a cell wall. ;) The whole point was that the new genome, when transferred to a recipient bacteria's plasma membrane with the recipient's genome removed, produces a different phenotype, which they showed. I think they are entitled to call this a minimal cell.
        • AnimalMuppet 11y ago
          > The species used here (mycoplasma) does not have a cell wall. ;) OK, I am not a biologist (I don't even play one on TV), so ELI5: How is that possible? How can a cell not have a cell wall?
          • mikeyouse 11y ago
            Most cells don't have cell walls, typically only plant species / fungi and some bacteria do. I think the confusion here is due to the term 'cell wall' which has a very specific meaning in biology and doesn't just denote the outer parameter of a cell. The 'cell membrane' is what keeps all the innards of a cell in place, but that's a distinct structure to the cell wall. http://www.majordifferences.com/2013/10/difference-cell-wall-vs-and-cell.html http://www.majordifferences.com/2013/10/difference-cell-wall...
            • AnimalMuppet 11y ago
              OK, got it. So, in my original post, just replace "cell wall" with "cell membrane", and you'll have what I should have said...