What is 'SpudCell'? Arguably the greatest bioengineering feat yet
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- Kate Adamala's team at the University of Minnesota created SpudCell, a synthetic cell assembled from 36 genes—mostly from E. coli, with additions from phage viruses and a jellyfish fluorescent protein gene
- SpudCell can copy DNA and divide, but stops after roughly five rounds because it cannot make its own ribosomes and needs externally supplied building blocks and fatty-membrane bubbles
- Adamala declined to call her creation 'alive,' saying she would only apply that label if it replicated indefinitely and showed Darwinian evolution—a bar it does not yet meet
- The SpudCell project is being released open source so other researchers can push it toward indefinite division, which Adamala says could be 'achievable very soon' once the cells can build their own ribosomes
- Previous minimal-cell efforts in 2016 stripped a 901-gene bacterium down to 473 genes; Adamala's group started from scratch with just 36—an order-of-magnitude reduction in genetic complexity
- Adamala's stated goal is to eventually produce petrochemicals biologically, replacing oil-derived plastics and pesticides with synthetic cells engineered to tolerate the toxic compounds normal cells cannot survive
Why it matters: Adamala's team shrank the gene count required for a replicating synthetic cell from 473 (the 2016 benchmark) to 36—an order-of-magnitude leap that advances her stated objective of replacing oil-derived chemicals with engineered biology.
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