THEY CREATED A CELL THAT'S ALMOST ALIVE. WHAT TO DO WITH IT NOW?

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

A SpudCell is an artificial cell created from lifeless ingredients that can grow, copy its DNA, divide in two, and start its cell cycle all over again. It is still far from a self-sustaining cell that any scientist could manufacture from prepared ingredients, but the technology could eventually make it easier to produce medicines, foods, and other items that could not otherwise be produced with ordinary biology. The researchers working on SpudCell hope that it will eventually be a platform for biotechnology that will allow a simple cell to be engineered in scores of useful ways. SpudCell could potentially be misused, so its researchers are taking security seriously from the start - its DNA and proteins are engineered so that it can only survive on an exotic diet of chemicals not found in nature.