Scientists at the University of Minnesota have made a significant breakthrough in synthetic biology, creating a laboratory-made system that can grow, replicate its genetic material, divide, and pass beneficial traits to future generations. The researchers describe this achievement as a major step toward building artificial life, but note that the synthetic cells cannot survive outside carefully controlled laboratory conditions and require externally supplied nutrients and specialized components to grow and divide.
The synthetic cell, dubbed "SpudCell," was assembled from chemically defined, nonliving components, unlike earlier approaches that started with living organisms. Its 90,000-base-pair genome enables the synthetic cell to produce proteins, replicate its DNA, feed, grow, and divide into daughter cells. Researchers also introduced a genetic mutation that allowed some synthetic cells to grow faster than others, demonstrating a basic form of natural selection.
The team's findings highlight key milestones toward the construction of synthetic life and could eventually provide a foundation for fully artificial organisms designed for biotechnology applications. However, the researchers acknowledged that the system remains far less capable than even the simplest living cells, requiring externally supplied nutrients and specialized components to function. After five generations, researchers found that only about 30% of daughter cells inherited the complete synthetic genome.
Despite these limitations, the researchers believe that the work demonstrates many of life's defining characteristics can be recreated from nonliving materials. They also acknowledged that increasingly sophisticated synthetic cells could raise new biosafety and biosecurity questions. To address these concerns, the researchers called for the development of a safety and security framework for future synthetic cell engineering.
Future work will focus on making synthetic cells more self-sufficient by regenerating more of their own molecular machinery, improving genome distribution during cell division, and allowing mutations to arise naturally rather than being introduced by researchers. This progress highlights the urgent need to develop a safety and security framework for future synthetic cell engineering.
