Fun to have a blast from the past with minimal genome synthetic cells and distributed view on the molecular communication being mentioned in the wetware workshop at #ALIFE2023

#MinimalGenome was the topic that got me into biology research back in 2011 (https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/41/18/8444/1031091).

#DistributedAlgorithms in living organisms was the topic that got me out of biology and into theoretical computer science (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/487348v1.full.pdf).

This, Science magazine 2016, is older (still an incredible achievement) but recent discussion:

Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6253
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36626656

A goal in biology is to understand the molecular and biological function of every gene in a cell. One way to approach this is to build a minimal genome that includes only the genes essential for life. ...

#MolecularGenetics #SyntheticBiology #MinimalGenome #genomics #MolecularFunction