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We don’t even know what like, 20% of the genes do. Simulations are neat, but they miss a lot of underlying biology that actually makes an impact on engineering.

One of my favorite papers was published 40 years ago on this topic https://pitp.ias.edu/sites/pitp/files/morowitz-completeness_...

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If you read the article you'd know that that's exactly why organisms such as JCVI-syn3A were created, where we know the (or at least some) function of 80% of the genes.

Oh wow, a RISC (reduced instruction set cell).

I’m well aware. I was in charge of designing and synthesizing the entire gene set, optimized for E.coli, in order for scientists to easily try to discover the function of these genes https://stanford.freegenes.org/collections/gene-sets/product...

Out of the 100 or so unknown genes we had/have, only like 3 unknowns were actually used for research. Such is science sometimes.

I thought you posted “Can a biologist fix a radio?” It’s also very pertinent to this topic:

https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.p...

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