He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh... Psalm 2:4
"This is déjà vu—our response is not much different in principle from what CMI wrote about a similar synthetic life claim 10 years ago.
It took an enormous amount of intelligence to make this cell, and they borrowed a lot of information from already-existing cells.
It does show that previous claims of synthetic life were probably
overstated, since the previous synthetic cells couldn’t reproduce
properly.
The latest work shows the immense complexity required for a
cell to produce two identical daughter cells, i.e. truly reproduce.
---This
requires both DNA replication and making sure the
machinery is duplicated and lands in the correct membranes of the two
new cells.
To achieve this, the researchers needed to put back genes
previously thought to be unnecessary for life.
*But even this new cell is described as “delicate … Tiny forces can
tear them apart.” Doesn’t sound like something that would last long in
the (mythical) primordial soup, even if it could arise in the first
place." CMI
