Showing my age a bit, a young Chris Rock in a 1988 movie amusingly asks: “How much for one rib?” Given that the crafting of a single protein plays a central role in this post, and ribs are a source of protein, the association was too much for me to pass up in the title.

I’ve pointed out before that our most elaborate inventions absolutely pale in comparison to even the simplest form of Life. Our gizmos can’t self-replicate, heal wounds, feed themselves, stave off pathogens, or self-evolve. Even though both gadgets and Life appear to be based on atoms and the same fundamental interactions, the level of complexity in Life is far beyond our means to create. At best, we bootstrap and copy.

To make the point, we’ll embark on a well-funded thought experiment that is able to assemble the top talent from around the world in a team given one mission: generate the genetic coding that would carry out a specific novel function by way of synthesizing a novel protein specific to that task. We stipulate a novel function that hasn’t arisen in any lifeform, otherwise the open-book (Google-connected) nature of this test would instantly result in “cheating” off a billion-year heritage.

Let’s see how they do.

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