Artificial Life

Originally posted by whodey
As ATY rightly pointed out earlier in this thread, they have merely modified life, not created it from scratch.

Though as he also pointed out, the rest of the mechanics of cell structures are well known and true artificial life, now that we have crossed this final barrier is likely to be very close at hand.
The actual simulation of early Earth conditions to create it from scratch without interventionist engineering will probably take much longer, but given that we've already gotten to basic self replicating molecules in less than 50 years... you can see where I'm going with this.