Comment by userulluipeste

The current model, of a cell that cannot live on its own and cannot evolve (being too far from "edge of chaos") is what will be most useful for bio-engineering. Yes, we need the mechanism for creating cells, and the newfound division for a minimum viable cell is paramount. But, we also need for ways to control its reproduction, be it as to die out on its own after few generations due to degraded protein build-up, or (in the best case scenario) due to some other built in mechanism. Otherwise, expect (at least) some amount of scaremongering, about playing fast and loose with things that may get out of hand. The best thing is to have this kind of cell template that could somehow be augmented with whatever additional plug-in functionality (useful for us, case by case) and then get it produced in the needed quantities and not more. The research direction that makes sense is for ways to add such "mission specific" functions to this synthetic cell and ways to create the first generation as efficiently as possible, at large scale. That's it.