Nicolasrivron, Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A new synthetic life form? Does it disprove God?

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 (creation.com/venter). 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.

It also shows that more genes are needed for minimal life than was thought a few years ago; cf. creation.com/simple. Now the number is about as high as that in the simplest naturally occurring life, the Mycoplasmas. But their history is clearly not from simpler organisms; they are parasites that devolved from more complex cells.

For much more on this work, see creation.com/synthetic-life-really.

• Pelletier, J.F. and 11 others, Genetic requirements for cell division in a genomically minimal cell, Cell, published online 29 Mar 2021.
• Scientists create simple synthetic cell that grows and divides normally, nist.gov, 29 Mar 2021.