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They got it down to 473 genes, but let's say that minimal life is some 20 of those genes. A brute force approach would require trying 10^34 combinations[1]. And that's already with the simplifying assumption that 20 genes is the minimal set rather than 19 or 106 or some other subset.

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=473+choose+20

When you're talking about 175 different genes, there are far more combinations of genes than there are atoms in the universe.

Perhaps a quantum computer can tackle this kind of problem, but nothing we have today can brute-force the solution.

I think it might take a while.

http://coolconversion.com/math/factorial/What-is-the-number-...