Scientists Made a Cell From Scratch For First Time
4 59AleRunner writes: The first fully synthetic cell ("SpudCell") has been created in the Department of Genetics at the University of Minnesota. Strictly speaking, it's described as a "cell-like system constructed entirely from known chemical components that can perform a complete cell cycle." It is able to replicate, but only for approximately five generations.
The key advance is that the cell is "built entirely bottom-up from individually purified, non-living components," although it still contains material from E. coli bacteria. "PURE is a defined mixture of 36 purified enzymes from E. coli bacteria," including ribosomes, that provides the infrastructure for genetic replication.
CNN has an article on the advance, including interview material with Professor Kate Adamala, who led the research. "I know the full ingredient list of the cell. I know exactly what chemicals, what molecules, at what concentrations," she said. "It is fully defined, which means we can engineer it." "Humans did not create life," notes an anonymous Slashdot reader. "Researchers call it a constructed cell, not 'life created in the lab' but a 'genuine milestone on the road toward that question.' It lacks full autonomy (needs feeding, no independent evolution)."
Special thanks to Slashdot readers kemosabi and AleRunner for submitting the story and additional sources, including reports from The New York Times and The Guardian, as well as information from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
4 comments
Re:This is the plot for "The Blob", isn't it? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by dvice ( 6309704 ) on Thursday July 02, 2026 @08:03AM (#66219632)
Life is hard. If you escape from the lab, you are against thousands of viruses, bacteria and fungi that try to eat you. I find it quite unlikely that you would just accidentally create a super cell from scratch that beats millions of years of evolution.
"From scratch" (Score: 5, Informative)
by Darren Hiebert ( 626456 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @05:21PM (#66218956)
...except for all of the 36 enzymes we borrowed from another living cell, yet still cannot do what that cell we borrowed it all from can do.
Ribosomes are awesome (Score: 5, Informative)
by unfortunateson ( 527551 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @05:49PM (#66219006)
Starting with a ribosome seems a bit like cheating -- they're extremely complex, probably Turing-complete biocomputers.
If there's proof of a supreme being, or aliens seeding life here (is there a difference), it's the ribosome.
Re:Ribosomes are awesome (Score: 5, Interesting)
by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2026 @08:13PM (#66219208)
People seem to think that the first living organism to evolve has to be as complex as the simplest cells we know, but more likely it was much simpler. We just don't have any living examples because such protocells probably can't compete with modern ones. The first life-forms can be slow, inefficient, inaccurate at reproducing, etc. because they had zero competition. Somebody joked "union workers evolved first!"
One interesting theory is that the first living thing(s) were actually a set of complimentary proto-cells where reproduction happened in cycled stages say: A to B to C back to A, because self-replicating is hard to get right in a single step. Each stage may have fed off different chemicals. Eventually they evolved into a single unit.