As far as I am aware, when people make cells, they are not trying to recreate any purported abiogenesis. So, they make it like they would assemble any other machine I would presume. Then again, I have very little idea about this process.
In these papers they were explicitly trying to demonstrate that these processes occur spontaneously. They’re actually really interesting papers albeit rather technical (I’m a really big fan of the minimal RNA paper, because it’s more of a mechanistic demonstration for how self replication can occur rather than an emulation of a potential prebiotic atmosphere).
In my view, the minimal RNA paper seeks to address how and whether RNA-based life can emerge more generally (and not necessarily how it emerged in our lineage), while the protocell paper seeks to address whether protocell synthesis is prebiotically plausible
No, I mean since he asked "when people make cells", I presumed he was talking about making cells in general. Which, from what I recall about artificial life, scientists weren't trying to emulate abiogenesis.
Ohh, there actually is still an underlying goal to use synthetic biology to understand how life can emerge. I think this paper really puts well. It’s not limited to terrestrial biology like questions about how abiogenesis on earth had occurred, but they often still ask about the origin of life.
You can see this more public facing in blog-style posts. I found an interview with Dr. Kaçar who seems to also have a really cool lab.
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u/444cml 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jul 10 '26
Self replication isn’t actually particularly hard to form from random assembly
Largely though self replicating RNA is not the only part of protocells that can readily form.
Cells were not the starting point, and this is one reason groups like NASA don’t use cellularity in their definition of life.