This Cell Feeds, Grows and Reproduces. And It's Manmade.

A group of scientists has just created a cell that feeds, grows, reproduces, and even competes for food — but it wasn't born; it was built in a laboratory. There has never been a time when the line between what is alive and what is just chemistry has been so thin. Kate Adamala, the biologist who led the experiment at the University of Minnesota, openly says: life is not binary; there is no real boundary, even though we would all like there to be one. Yet this cell — called SpudCell because of its potato-like shape — does almost everything a natural cell does: it feeds through channels on its surface, incorporates bubbles of larger molecules, grows, and then divides into two. And it does so with a recipe completely invented by humans, starting from a "broth" of a hundred proteins, membranes, and genes taken from viruses and bacteria. Drew Endy, one of the pioneers of synthetic biology at Stanford, commented that “it's a built cell, not a born cell: it's built, but it does what cells do.” Not only that: SpudCells are also able to evolve. The team created a "mutant" variant that attaches better to nutrient-filled bubbles, and in five generations this version has outnumbered the original cells. In practice: we have seen natural selection at work on something that, until yesterday, we would not even have called alive. But there's more: these cells have not been patented. Adamala and Endy have founded an open-source research community, Biotic, which will invest hundreds of millions of dollars over the next ten years to improve SpudCells and make them more autonomous. Anyone will be able to participate, with the aim of achieving synthetic cells that can do things that nature has never done: produce new types of drugs, remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and perhaps even create toxic chemicals or rocket fuel. The most surprising part? Despite decades of research, no one yet knows for sure how many genes are needed for minimal life. Human DNA has tens of thousands of genes and millions of molecular switches, and even when the genome of a microbe is reduced to a minimum, there are still genes whose function is unknown. John Glass, who has been working on these minimal genomes for thirty years, admits that even today there are at least 56 "ghost" genes about which nothing is known, but without which the cell cannot live. This explains why, instead of removing pieces, Adamala's team chose the opposite path: building life from the bottom up, combining dead molecules until they become something that behaves like a cell. The most human scene in the story comes when Adamala, after a year of trying, finally sees her protein bubbles split in two. “Once it works, it works,” he says. But not everything is solved yet: SpudCell still has to receive a ready-made protein factory, the ribosome, "by hand" because it cannot build it on its own. Without this help, the cell stops functioning after 5-10 generations. Endy compares this feat to the Wright brothers' first flight: twelve seconds in the air don't make a Boeing, but they change history. And behind the scenes, there is already a discussion about how to prevent someone from using these cells for dangerous purposes: the choice to work in open source, say Adamala and Endy, also serves to set the rules before it is too late. If you thought life was an on/off switch, SpudCell shows that it's a gray scale: life can begin where you least expect it, even among test tubes and freezers full of proteins. If this story concerns you, you can press I'm In on Lara Notes: it's not a like, it's your way of saying that this idea is now part of your way of thinking. And if tomorrow you tell someone that there is a cell made in the laboratory that feeds and evolves, on Lara Notes you can mark the conversation with Shared Offline: it's the way to say that you really talked about it. This Note comes from The New York Times and saves you 3 minutes.