> Not sure why you’re focusing on gene editing, though. The perspective doesn’t address that point at all. It's not at all useful to focus on "building blocks"

> Not sure why you’re focusing on gene editing, though. The perspective doesn’t address that point at all. It's not at all useful to focus on "building blocks" directly (I really don't like that term, but let's use it anyway). With every cell division, each one gets half the quantity of initial buiding blocks the cell was initially constructed with. If DNA can't direct the creation of new buiding blocks, in max 2 generations there won't be enough for a new cell division. So, you see, it doesn't matter what building blocks (except DNA) the initial cell started with, synthetic or from an existing cell. In just a few generations the initial material is all gone. In a living cell, all building blocks (cell structural components, functional components, metabolism, etc.) are derived directly or indirectly from DNA. DNA may directly encode ribosomal RNA (a functional component), or a cytoskeleton protein (a structural component), or a series of enzymes that process non-protein building-blocks [1]. So, in an artificial cell, the focus is always genes. The article may not focus on gene editing, but that's the 99.9% of the work - making DNA that makes building blocks. > enabling non-canonical chemistries, alternate macromolecular architectures Ah, this is the point you were trying to make! It is very difficult to create new proteins that work for some purpose other than enzymes (current examples: synthetic antigens (vaccines), enzyme inhibitors (Imatinib), receptor blockers, receptor activators). Remember folding@home? It's an order of magnitude harder than that to create new enzymes . I can't even give you an example. And it's an order of magnitude harder still to create DNA/genes that makes enzymes. It's literally creating a molecular folding@home program [2] using folding@home. It's not realistically possible today to create complex cellular machines such as the DNA replication enzymes [3], which are the most important parts of a living cell. There's absolutely no way to create a completely new synthetic cell without having those machines. And then, remeber folding@home? We don't need the machines - we need the DNA that makes the machines that fold the machines (no, it's not a typo, it's that complicated). We can, at best, convince bacteria to syntesize new drugs for us. No need for a new synthetic organism for that. E.coli can do it just fine. As reaserch only, entirely new, very simple cell components can be created, probably even convincing some host cell to make them for itself, but we're very, very, very far from bottom-up building a living cell. Cold fusion and interstellar travel are closer than that. When you read an article like that, think "money", as in "grant money" and "investors", not "future tech". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_synthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_synthesis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaperone_(protein) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaperone_(protein) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_replication#DNA_replication_proteins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_replication#DNA_replicatio... (you should read a bit about each one)