For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

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• Hacker News
• The wikipedia website to "It's alive" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_Alive) lists mostly horror movies. So I'm not sure this is good news.
  by amai
• "The cell is not alive by any definition..." "But it’s the strongest demonstration yet that it is possible to generate life from nonlife."

  Contradicting themself in the same paragraph.

  by 1-6
• The wheel is not a car. However a wheel is a strong indication that car-like structures are at least possible.
  by tsunamifury
• > 'Unlike living natural cells... the synthetic SpudCell can't survive and replicate without feeding on external food and ribosomes'

  So in the future when there's a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of SpudCellular Biology, the SpudCells will devour all biological life they can in order to harvest the building blocks they need. "Just social distance and wear two masks," the Surgeon General tells the CNN correspondent, as he disolves to red gray goo on live TV.

  by blorbthrow
• Going by people’s reactions to AI, what will our reactions be to artificial humans generated from these methods?

  Will they be hated? Killed off? Will they ever be see as legitimate, or just soulless beings, p-zombies.

  by deadbabe
• From cells dividing to human generation there is a single step.

  Similarly a program that runs on a computer, where its only interactions are strings of numbers is the same as an entity having to interact with the world.

  by vhantz
• That is closer to consciousness than AI will ever be. :)
  by germandiago
• yes
  by JanJedryszek
• Elan conscietal? (a pun on elan vital)
  by red75prime
• Definitely. An implication of several strands of idealism is that we will be able to create artificial life (with consciousness)... it will just look like biology.
  by namero999
• For the love of all things holy, can we not do these kinds of experiments on the same planet we live on?
  by joh6nn
• I blame black mirror for this attitude. If you're going to speculate on imaginary futures why can't they be positive?
  by snapcaster
• :(
  by JanJedryszek
• Oh shut up, can we get some frontier stuff going without some doom and gloom. All this knowledge for all these years and next to no progress.
  by dyauspitr
• Uh-oh
  by oytis
• this is how Sekiguchi Genetics got started. Or maybe Weyland Yutani Corporation
  by caycep
• Frankenstein!
  by galaxyLogic
• "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe"
  by HanClinto
• "And that is why God is far less interested in modern mortal affairs than Theists want Him to be." - [source forgotten]
  by bell-cot
• se penso ad una cosa del genere mi vengono totalmente i brividi
  by Masho_17
• Reminded me of Maturana and his autopoiesis.
  by netfortius
• I wonder what animal or plant would grow out of that...
  by humanfromearth9
• Neither. This is a single cell.

  Replicating eukaryogenesis with synthetic components is something I hope to see in my lifetime.

  by JumpCrisscross
• This is literally how Cell was made. Cell Saga, here we go.
  by kadomony
• Craig Venter wanted to do this. But he died earlier this year.
  by Animats
• I'll be impressed when they can create an entire cell from scratch and it will start to divide. They can create all the needed precursors, bypassing millions of years of random permutation. Because until you have an entire working cell with replication, you have no retained benefit.
  by yehosef
• I could have told them that this would work, it's pretty obvious!
  by keepupnow
• For some reason, research like this has a much more apocalyptic feeling than it has in the past.
  by catigula
• Interesting. I pasted the article URL into Claude Opus 4.8, along with some questions about uses for cells that couldn't reproduce and Claude thought about it for a while, and then got murdered by the guardrails. I was invited to edit the question and try again; in a different chat. Or use a dumber model.

  I suppose I can see why. But at the time I was just curious about the idea of "mule" cells.

  by commieneko
• Which shows why guardrails on AI are just dumb. What harm could come from answering your question? None.
  by bradley13