The Mysterious Thing About a Marvelous New Synthetic Cell

Scientists have created a bacterium with a minimal, life-sustaining genome, but they don’t know what a third of its genes do.

Why bother? Because they ultimately want to intelligently design new life-forms from scratch–say, bacteria that can manufacture medical drugs, or algae that churn out biofuels. And creation requires understanding.

Ed Yong

Full Story: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/the-quest-to-make-synthetic-cells-shows-how-little-we-know-about-life/475053/

Thanks to David Nelson for sharing