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In the Miller–Urey experiment they produced several amino acids. I'm not sure if there were other similar experiments that got further.

http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full-text/article/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell-constructed-by-j-craig-venter-institute-researcher/ is a reference to making a cell, but they really injected an engineered genome into an existing cell (which is pretty amazing!)

But I'm interested in work to make completely synthetic life with no preexisting biological components.

JEJS
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Yehosef
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  • Since you're discussing the boundary between living and non-living matter, can you provide a concrete definition for what you consider life for the purpose of this question? – p.s.w.g Jan 28 '15 at 00:01
  • a self replicating cell - but I'm open to other definitions if they exist. And I'm also not looking only for creation of complete life - just the furthest we've gotten. Lets imagine is the goal to make (even in lab conditions) a single self-replicating bacteria from raw materials, how far along are we? 1%, 5% 70%, etc. I'm interested in what we've made until now and where the next steps are to go further. – Yehosef Jan 28 '15 at 00:11
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    This might interest you: http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/19316/first-rna-polymerase-mrna/19737#19737 – canadianer Jan 28 '15 at 00:35
  • Modern bacteria are extremely complex (they've been evolving for about 4 billion years) and probably look very little like the first organisms on earth. We're not even sure if early life used DNA. Whatever we can produce in a lab from no pre-existing components, is bound to be hard to recognize as life as if it had evolved on an entirely different planet. – p.s.w.g Jan 28 '15 at 00:48
  • I think the simple answer is that no one has come anywhere close to doing what you ask for, under any commonly accepted definition of "life". Jack Szostak's work (http://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/) is a good place to start researching this. – Leon Avery Jan 28 '15 at 14:41
  • @LeonAvery - if you want to post your comment as an answer, I can select it as no one else has offered anything better. – Yehosef May 16 '15 at 23:02

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