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Fascinating stuff, thanks! A recent workshop with recorded talks on such cells https://www.jcvi.org/events/minimal-cell-workshop https://www.jcvi.org/events/min
by 331c8c71 3y ago
Fascinating stuff, thanks! A recent workshop with recorded talks on such cells https://www.jcvi.org/events/minimal-cell-workshop https://www.jcvi.org/events/minimal-cell-workshop
I am wondering if other researchers can procure or produce these cells or these are rather a know-how of JCVI?
- koeng 3y agoI gave a talk at that workshop! (I’m making the 61 codon version of JCVI-Syn3a) You can get the cells as a researcher, but basically forget about it for a commercial user or hobbyist. They’re also annoying as hell to grow. I’m trying to synthesize it from scratch for the precise reason of freeing it from MTAs (material transfer agreements)
- DylanSp 3y agoSounds like you're doing good work! Out of curiosity, can you give a layman's explanation of what makes them hard to grow?
- koeng 3y agoTheir media is real complicated and expensive (plus difficult to prepare: can’t just throw everything in an autoclave), and they don’t grow very fast, and they don’t grow to a high concentration. Basically that means that you can easily get contamination (like you would growing human cells), and even when you do get growth, it’s dilute.
- charred_patina 3y agoI do some biology-adjacent programming work. I think protein and cell simulations would be a fun area to learn about. I am familiar with projects like OpenWorm. You seem pretty knowledgeable about the field. How does one get into computational biology? What prerequisite knowledge would I need to be able to write simulations like in this article?