A two-billion atom cell ... isn't that a bit small for a cell?
Still amazing that it can now be fully simulated "in silico".
"In this new organism, the number of genes can only be pared down to 473, 149 of which have functions that are completely unknown."
But if we now can simulate this cell completely, shouldn't it be easy to figure out what those genes are doing? Just start the simulation with them knocked out.
The funny thing is if you read the history of Feynman and others, most of them grew up opening up radios and learning how they worked by removing things. fixing them. It's a very common theme (sort of falls off post-transistor tho). I opened up radios as a kid, tried to figure out what parts did what, and eventually gave up.