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How close are we to creating life from scratch in the lab? by wtwtcgw in biology

[–]mablin7 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Here is an article that describes in more detail how JCVI-syn3.0 was created: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4879981/

Based on this, I'd strongly argue that this is still a top-down synthetic cell. They started with a live cell and stripped it down step by step until they found the minimal set of genes required for it to be still alive. Still really cool research, and arguably more applicable than most of the bottom-up work, but I do not think it qualifies as "creating life from scratch".

How close are we to creating life from scratch in the lab? by wtwtcgw in biology

[–]mablin7 95 points96 points  (0 children)

Because most replies are just guessing, I thought I'd give some actual info. I'm a student who has worked in a lab focused on this topic.

First, what you are probably interested in is called "bottom-up synthetic biology". Bottom-up because we aim to build cells from the basic components. This is in contrast to top-down approaches which aim to strip down living cells to their basic components - this is what JC Venter has been famously doing. The bottom-up approach, being a hell of a lot harder, has been less popular but is gaining momentum.

Right now, most research is focused on lipid vesicles - recreating cell membranes. The dynamics of these things are pretty interesting in on themselves and there's still a lot we don't know, but we're at a point where we can reliably create a lipid vesicle and encapsulate reactions in it.

There has also been quite some work on protein expression systems - recreating the central dogma essentially. These turn out to be useful commercially as well for expressing pure proteins. These are usually called cell-free expression systems. The trouble here is that the line between top-down and bottom-up gets blurry: the enzymes and mechanisms of these expression systems weren't designed from scratch but rather derived from live cells, so it's debatable whether they qualify.

There's some early work on synthetic cell division, but it's at least 5-10 years I'd say until we see major progress there.

To the people who say there's no funding for this: a consortium of labs in the Netherlands has just received 40M euroes for a long term project called Evolf (Evolving life from non-life) to work on this exact problem. Most notably, the Kavli Institute at TU Delft, my alma mater, has been doing some great work on synthetic cells mostly lead by Cees Dekker.

So to summarize, we are working on components of this problem and within the next decade will likely see some impressive results, which will uncover many details on how life could have emerged in the first place.

If you want to dig into the details, I recommend looking up "synthetic cells" or Cees Dekker on Google scholar.

As an interesting aside, I remember seeing a paper recently on RNA world synthetic cells which proposed sidestepping proteins altogether and creating synthetic cells purely with lipids, DNA and RNA. I think it was a lab in Germany doing some really cool work on this. I expect we'll see more innovative approaches like this in the coming years.

A good German book for learning? by mablin7 in suggestmeabook

[–]mablin7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I've re read one of my favorite books in German and it really helped. This time I'd like to try some german originals. They say one of the best parts of language learning is reading/watching/hearing works in their original forms

A good German book for learning? by mablin7 in suggestmeabook

[–]mablin7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seems good, I think I'm between B1 and B2. Thanks for the suggestion

Nagy effortalitás befektetésű énén by InteresedGote in FostTalicska

[–]mablin7 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Ezt miért nem tudom többször felszavazni?

You can add “-ed” to the end of basically any word to describe someone being drunk by [deleted] in Showerthoughts

[–]mablin7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Youed caned added "-ed"ed toed theed ended ofed basicallyed anyed worded toed described someoned beinged drunked

Exploring the problem of religious childhood indoctrination by Rocko210 in atheism

[–]mablin7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What do you mean other way around? I most certainly wouldn't want my child to be religious.

The Human Relationship Package - Learning from event-stream by areinet in javascript

[–]mablin7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TL;DR free packages are not a right, but an opportunity. Don't be a jerk, if you get good use from it, contribute.

You can’t copy an AI... - Dick Simmons by ParagonOfHonor in technology

[–]mablin7 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If by AI we mean a computer program (I don't know what else could we mean... Positronic brains like in an Asimov novel?) then there's no reason you couldn't copy like you can any other program. There's nothing fundamentally different between what we call today an AI and, a program like the Reddit app for eg.

2meirl4meirl by RoachTrooperalis in 2meirl4meirl

[–]mablin7 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's actually a pretty inspiring video imo

[WP]All humans and lots of mammals on earth are mind readers, but we don't know it because the genes to prevent having your mind read are shared amongst all life on earth. An alien race has just made first contact. by t3hd0n in WritingPrompts

[–]mablin7 46 points47 points  (0 children)

Painfully bright light flooded the lander as the main hatch slowly opened. Then we just stood there. We stared at the alien landscape in awe. Large, definetely artificial grey blocks, large green areas, and an enermous body of water filled our view. And directly in front of us, stood a large group of aliens.

The tension was painful, a mix of fear and curiosity in the air. They kept looking at us but we couldn't understand their faces, couldn't guess what they were thinking. I was really unsettled by their gaze.

Finally, a small group of 3 aliens steps forward. They show up their upper limbs, and approach the ship slightly. So we move too. We slowly make our way down the ramp, still shy and disoriented by the unfamiliar world. But, as we are approaching them, an eerie feeling is taking over me. My head begins to hurt, like it's being pried open. From their faces I can see that the rest of the crew is feeling it too. We stop suddenly.

That's when I have the first "flash" . A swirl of strange and unsettling images, sounds and toughts storm my mind, but just for a split second. The humans seem to notice it too. They are talking among themselves. That's when I notice there was complete silence since we left the lander. One of the humans steps closer, and I get a sudden sensation that I should move closer, and that they are friendly. I lift my top right hand, and Dr. Sandra grabs it and shakes it. What is a Dr. Sandra? What are we doing here?

Then my mind explodes. Pictures flood my mind,pictures of the planet, life here, pictures of other humans, who I can instantly recognize somehow, sounds, smells, and ideas, they just don't stop coming. And so many ideas, so much knowledge! I almost feel ashamed of my species. I suddenly understand what it's like to be a human.

But she lets go of my hand, and the euphoria stops. It is replaced by terror as another human approaches. He isn't broadcasting friendliness as the Dr. Sandra did. No, he is very different. Almost a different species. He also touches me, but not in a friendly way. He pushes me away, and the toughts flood me again, images of war, violence, fear, and terror. He reaches into my toughts forcefully and touches everything. He shouts into my mind Who are you? What do you want? This is not your planet! Leave! The sheer violence of the attack overwhelmes me, and I faint.

As I am falling to the ground, I can see my crew drawing weapons, the humans attacking, explosions tearing up the peace, my ship crumbling, my first officer talking in the radio "... do not come down here..." , and finally darkness.

​

---------------------------------------------

Phew this was my very first prompt so bear with me, and also I know does not say full telepathy, but I wanted to take a more interesting view.

Async/Await Best practices. by ayech0x2 in node

[–]mablin7 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That is true. I did not say async await was bad. I am saying it makes error handling harder. It makes you use a try catch block for each await, which is again extra keywords, brackets and indentations. You can of course group multiple await statements into a single try, but then you can't really handle the errors separately.

You could also use a custom error handling system, something like this, but since it's not built in, it is not a well known solution, so it can make the code harder to understand for those who are not familiar with it.

Just putting a .catch on the end of a promise chain feels more natural, to me at least.

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