- Oct 17, 2011
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Scientists have long dreamed of discovering the alchemy by which chemicals can be turned into life. On Wednesday, a team at the University of Minnesota announced that it had taken a major step toward that vision.
Blending together dozens of ingredients, the researchers have synthesized simple cells that feed, grow, reproduce and compete with one another for food. If these cells are not yet fully alive, they have most of the hallmarks of life.
“Life is not binary,” said Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist who led the research. “That’s why I’m hesitant to call this ‘alive.’ There’s no clear line, as much as we would love it to be.”
Dr. Adamala named her creation SpudCell, after its potato-like appearance. Rather than patent it, she and Dr. Endy are organizing a community of scientists to focus on making SpudCells more fully alive and adapting them to new kinds of experiments.
They and their colleagues have founded a nonprofit research organization that Dr. Endy estimates will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the effort in the next decade. Hundreds of scientists are expected to join.
The first step was to create a broth of the molecules necessary for a cell to operate. The recipe ultimately included about a hundred kinds of proteins and simple molecules required for crucial chemical reactions, such as making new proteins from genes.
The researchers also provided their synthetic cell with genes borrowed from a virus and the ubiquitous microbe Escherichia coli. They picked 36 genes for basic jobs like copying DNA.
After mixing these ingredients together into a soup, the scientists added the building blocks of membranes. They spontaneously joined together into bubbles, each engulfing some of the soup.
Many of these bubbles ended up encasing the right mix of genes, proteins and other molecules, and they started carrying out the chemical reactions seen in real cells.
As the cells fed, they grew. And in just a few hours, they were big enough to divide.
The scientists added a special protein to the flasks, which latched onto the surface of the cells and forced them to bend inward. Once the cells split in two, the pair of new cells kept growing.
For all this evidence of life, SpudCell still has some major shortcomings. For starters, it can’t make the molecular factory that produces new proteins, called a ribosome. The cells can carry all the genes they need to build ribosomes, but for some reason the parts don’t come together.
Blending together dozens of ingredients, the researchers have synthesized simple cells that feed, grow, reproduce and compete with one another for food. If these cells are not yet fully alive, they have most of the hallmarks of life.
“Life is not binary,” said Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist who led the research. “That’s why I’m hesitant to call this ‘alive.’ There’s no clear line, as much as we would love it to be.”
Dr. Adamala named her creation SpudCell, after its potato-like appearance. Rather than patent it, she and Dr. Endy are organizing a community of scientists to focus on making SpudCells more fully alive and adapting them to new kinds of experiments.
They and their colleagues have founded a nonprofit research organization that Dr. Endy estimates will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the effort in the next decade. Hundreds of scientists are expected to join.
The first step was to create a broth of the molecules necessary for a cell to operate. The recipe ultimately included about a hundred kinds of proteins and simple molecules required for crucial chemical reactions, such as making new proteins from genes.
The researchers also provided their synthetic cell with genes borrowed from a virus and the ubiquitous microbe Escherichia coli. They picked 36 genes for basic jobs like copying DNA.
After mixing these ingredients together into a soup, the scientists added the building blocks of membranes. They spontaneously joined together into bubbles, each engulfing some of the soup.
Many of these bubbles ended up encasing the right mix of genes, proteins and other molecules, and they started carrying out the chemical reactions seen in real cells.
As the cells fed, they grew. And in just a few hours, they were big enough to divide.
The scientists added a special protein to the flasks, which latched onto the surface of the cells and forced them to bend inward. Once the cells split in two, the pair of new cells kept growing.
For all this evidence of life, SpudCell still has some major shortcomings. For starters, it can’t make the molecular factory that produces new proteins, called a ribosome. The cells can carry all the genes they need to build ribosomes, but for some reason the parts don’t come together.
