[guggleet]

We already can...?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

[adrianN]

Depends on what you mean by "can". From the Wikipedia article:

"A living "artificial cell" has been defined as a completely synthetic cell that can capture energy, maintain ion gradients, contain macromolecules as well as store information and have the ability to mutate. Nobody has been able to create such a cell."

[guggleet]

Completely synthetic, no, but I think that overlooks a lot.

[s1artibartfast]

I think syntactic biology is still very far from creating lifeforms from atomic or molecular precursors.

Xenobots, for example are made using harvested stem cells