Kate Adamala has a vision of the future. In this context, biology would replace chemical manufacturing.
“The ultimate success,” says the synthetic biologist, would be that “all the atoms we move around in our economy are moved with biology.”
Adamala and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis announced a step toward that future on July 1 when the team unveiled SpudCells, synthetic cells which can replicate their DNA and divide several times.
Some people have hailed SpudCells as the first synthetic life. Adamala is not one of them. SpudCells “obviously don’t live,” she says. “They are cells but they are not alive.”
SpudCells are little more than bubbles of fatty membranes containing DNA and proteins borrowed from various viruses and bacteria. Ultimately, these synthetic cells may be able to produce chemicals, fuels and drugs such as antibiotics, Adamala says. SpudCells can’t do that yet.
Unlike natural living cells, SpudCells are not self-sufficient. To function, they need researchers to feed them bubbles filled with protein-producing machines and raw materials. Researchers also need to chemically induce the SpudCells to “grow” – to fuse with the feeding bubbles and take on cargo – and to divide.
Fusion and division depend on proteins encoded by the cells’ DNA. It’s innovation that sets SpudCells apart from previous attempts to build cells from scratch, says physicist Tom Robinson of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Robinson and others produced membranes that can divide like cellswhile other groups have successfully replicated DNA in artificial cells. But linking the two in a way that DNA controls growth and division has never been done before, he says.
Robinson was not involved in this work, but he joined Biotic, an international nonprofit research coalition led by Adamala and three other scientists. “We’ve pushed this technology as far as a single lab can push it alone,” says Adamala. “We need collaborators to add their expertise. »
Biotic, short for Biology is Open Technology Inspiring Civilization, Inc., will coordinate and fund research aimed at transforming SpudCells into independent cells. It will also standardize protocols and methods used to construct synthetic cells.
“We’re pretty far from a functional synthetic cell,” Robinson says, “but we’re well on our way.”
