In a First, an Entire Organism Is Simulated by Software
This is very exciting progress, but let's remember that there is a rather important caveat with this sort of thing;<p><i>"For their computer simulation, the researchers had the advantage of extensive scientific literature on the bacterium. They were able to use data taken from more than 900 scientific papers to validate the accuracy of their software model."</i><p>This is not (necessarily) a model of <i>M. genitalium</i> - it's a model of our understanding of <i>M. genitalium</i>, and as such incorporates in everything that current technology in biological sciences allows us to look at. It takes a huge amount of data from many sources and tries to bring it together on a scale not previously done. However, that data may have significant flaws, biases and ultimately considers only what we're good at looking at (technologically/scientifically speaking). It's awesome, and 100% the right direction for the field, but equally it is not a, "synthetic life form being simulated" as much as, "a very very complicated model which uses huge amounts of multidimensional data to try and replicate the behavior seen in that data".