A Machine That Makes Dinner From Scratch? The Parts Already Exist.

Some Assembly Required: printed meat in stores, microbes that brew food protein, DNA machines that do molecular jobs and printers that build apartment blocks. Here is how they could snap together.

TL;DR

Imagine telling a machine "steak, medium rare" or "a replacement hinge for the cabinet" and watching it make one from scratch. That is the Star Trek replicator, and nobody is close to building it as a single box. But the pieces it would need are showing up separately, right now: 3D-printed plant-based meat on American grocery shelves, microbes engineered to brew specific food proteins, tiny machines made of DNA that do a programmed mechanical job, and printers big enough to build apartment blocks. Put them side by side and a rough blueprint appears. Here's the parts list, how they might snap together, and who is best placed to try.

Below the line, for paid subscribers: the full parts list, with what each piece can do today and our odds on its next step; how the pieces could fit together (labeled speculation); our odds on the whole machine and the part holding it back; what would change those odds; and the companies best placed to build it.