For the first time, scientists have packed nonliving molecules into a membrane and watched them come to something close to life. The lab-made synthetic cell — dubbed SpudCell — grows, replicates its own DNA, and divides into daughter cells, demonstrating a complete cell cycle from scratch.

Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota, led the team behind the breakthrough, published on biorxiv.org on July 2. The work has not yet been peer-reviewed, but outside researchers are calling it "an impressive step" toward the holy grail of synthetic biology: generating life from nonlife.

Unlike previous efforts that stripped down existing bacterial cells, SpudCell was assembled piece by piece from defined chemical components. Its genome contains just 90,000 base pairs — smaller than the previously estimated minimum of 113,000 — and it divides without a cytoskeleton. Instead, proteins crowd at the membrane surface until mechanical stress forces the cell to split in two.

Perhaps most strikingly, when researchers introduced a genetic change that boosted production of a key protein, cells carrying that change grew faster and outcompeted the originals within five generations — a demonstration of evolution operating in a fully synthetic system.

The cell cannot survive outside the lab. It lacks ribosomes of its own and must be fed constant deliveries of molecular machinery to keep functioning. That's by design. Because every component is known and controllable, SpudCell is a platform: researchers can swap parts in and out to study disease, produce biofuels, or manufacture industrial chemicals that conventional chemistry cannot touch.

As Adamala put it: "What else can biology do?" We are about to find out.

Sources: Quanta Magazine | The Register