Scientists have crossed a threshold that synthetic biologists have been chasing for decades: they built a cell from nonliving components that grows, copies its DNA, and divides — completing a full cell cycle.

Kate Adamala and her team at the University of Minnesota pieced together the cell, dubbed a "spudcell," inside a simple lipid membrane. They packed it with a tiny synthetic genome, a commercial enzyme pack for reading DNA and making proteins, and supply-filled liposomes that fuse with the cell membrane to deliver nutrients, ribosomes, and other essentials.

The real breakthrough came with division. Instead of trying to replicate a cell's complex cytoskeleton — the protein scaffold that natural cells use to split — Adamala borrowed a trick from another lab: protein tags on the membrane attract other proteins to crowd around and physically bend it, forcing the cell to pinch in two. "Holy shit, did I actually make a dividing cell?" she recalled thinking when it first worked.

The cell is not alive. It can't survive without constant deliveries of food and ribosomes, has no waste removal system, and can't evolve on its own — the DNA-copying enzyme is too accurate to introduce meaningful mutations. But it's the most lifelike synthetic cell ever built. "The modern cell is like a Dreamliner," Adamala said. "We built a Wright flyer."

John Glass of the J. Craig Venter Institute, who pioneered minimal-genome cells, called it "a watershed event for the synthetic-cell field and biology in general." Job Boekhoven, a systems chemist at the University of Groningen, said the field is "definitely getting quite close" to its holy grail of making a living thing from dead components.

The work, posted to bioRxiv and not yet peer-reviewed, opens a door to designer cells that could one day produce biofuels, drugs, or plastics without fossil fuels. Adamala and fellow synthetic biologists also announced Biotic, a nonprofit to share their tools with researchers worldwide.

Sources: Quanta Magazine