Have scientists really made a living cell from scratch? Not quite
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- Kate Adamala at the University of Missouri and colleagues assembled the SpudCell from 36 genes — mostly from E. coli, some from phage viruses, and one fluorescent protein from jellyfish — engineered into seven circular DNA pieces.
- Unlike previous minimal-cell efforts that stripped existing bacteria down (a 2016 project reduced a 901-gene bacterium to 493 genes), Adamala's team built upward from just 36 genes, making it arguably the greatest feat of bioengineering to date.
- The SpudCell can replicate its DNA and divide roughly five times before stopping, because it cannot make its own ribosomes; Adamala says getting the cell to produce ribosomes could enable indefinite division 'very soon.'
- Division is unequal and random — daughter cells bud off with haphazard distributions of the seven DNA circles, and many lack complete gene sets.
- Adamala won't call it living: she defines life as requiring indefinite replication plus spontaneous Darwinian evolution, and her team had to deliberately introduce mutations to demonstrate any evolutionary response.
- The SpudCell project is being released as open-source so outside researchers can refine the genome toward stable, self-sustaining division.
- The long-term goal, per Adamala, is synthetic cells that can manufacture petrochemicals — replacing oil-derived plastics and pesticides with biology that tolerates compounds toxic to natural cells.
Why it matters: SpudCell is the closest anyone has come to building life from a minimal gene set, yet its 36-gene, five-division limitation exposes how far synthetic biology remains from a self-sustaining organism. Making the platform open-source invites the broader field to solve the ribosome problem, which Adamala herself flags as the likely barrier to indefinite replication.
