Minnesota team builds synthetic cell, launches benefit corp
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- Kate Adamala, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, led the team that built liposomes containing DNA plasmids that appear to divide and replicate their genetic code.
- After five generations, 30% of the cell-like bubbles still contain the original DNA sequence, per the team's report.
- The system is "fully chemically defined" with no unknown building blocks, but must be fed food plus a key enzyme — itself packaged in other liposomes — to function.
- The team has started a public benefit corporation to share the technology with other researchers.
- Adamala framed the work as advancing the ability to "engineer biology," arguing the system does things "people up until now used to think only natural living cells can do."
- Scientists are debating whether the structures qualify as alive, since they differ from natural cells yet perform functions once thought exclusive to living ones.
Why it matters: Adamala's claim that the system replicates DNA — a function historically limited to living cells — puts a new tool in synthetic biology's kit, and the accompanying public benefit corporation signals intent to distribute the platform to outside labs rather than hoard it.
