A breakthrough in synthetic life

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have built a synthetic cell from off-the-shelf chemicals that can feed, grow, and divide on its own. The cells, called "spud cells," are not alive by most definitions, but they represent a major milestone in synthetic biology: a proof of concept that the functions of life can be assembled from non-living parts. The work challenges long-held assumptions about what is possible and opens a path toward engineering custom cells for sustainable manufacturing of plastics, drugs, and other materials.

What synthetic cells are and why build them

Synthetic biologist Kate Adamala describes her lab's goal as "teaching life to do the things that natural biology never bothered doing." Natural cells are incredibly efficient chemical factories, but they come with nearly four billion years of evolutionary baggage. They use a narrow set of building blocks—only 20 amino acids and five nucleobases—and resist being reprogrammed to make things nature never needed. Synthetic cells bypass this limitation. By building cells from scratch using non-living chemicals (white powders, greasy liquids from a chemistry lab), researchers gain complete control over the ingredient list. As Adamala puts it, paraphrasing Richard Feynman: "What I cannot build, I cannot understand." If you cannot fully understand a natural cell's complexity, you can instead build a simpl