By Reema Gampel, Staff Writer
The definition of life is not as simple as people are often led to believe. For something to be considered alive, it needs to meet several criteria, including the ability to grow, to sustain and to reproduce. However, life is incredibly expansive. Anything that fits the description of “alive” is lumped into the living category. The question scientists are asking now is how far are they able to push these boundaries? With the recent discovery of synthetic SpudCells, this question is more pressing than ever.
For the first time, scientists have built a cell from scratch. Using genes from Escherichia coli, hundreds of molecules necessary for life, and membrane builders, they created a solution that precipitated out cells. They behave like regular cells, growing, sustaining themselves, and reproducing; they’re checking off all the boxes needed to be considered living. Yet they are still made from chemicals in a lab, so are they classified the same as other life? Dr. Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist leading this study, states that she is “hesitant to call this ‘alive.’ There’s no clear line, as much as we would love it to be.”
These cells, however, are not as self-sufficient as originally hoped. They still need to be manually given certain aids, like ribosomes, which are the organelle that produces proteins. Even though they have all the genes they should need to make ribosomes, these cells are incapable of making this organelle themselves. Furthermore, the ribosomes that are implanted in the SpudCells only last between five and ten generations. The scientists on the project hope that these cells are refined so that they work without human intervention.
Building cells can give scientists clues to how life evolved on Earth in a natural setting. So too, learning about life’s beginning on Earth can help scientists perfect the conditions needed for the growth and maintenance of SpudCells. A longstanding question confounding scientists is how sugar, a necessary component of life, was formed on Earth. Unlike a cell, scientists have never been able to create sugar in a lab, leaving them almost clueless about how it could’ve originated. However, a recent discovery suggests that sugar is not native to this planet at all. Erythrulose, a sugar found in raspberries, was discovered to exist in the Milky Way.
This finding changes the entire landscape of how humans relate to life. While scientists are still uncertain about how sugar made its way onto Earth and have not found sugars that are essential to a cell’s makeup, the theory that the substance came from outer space to Earth adds another piece to the story of how life started on this planet. With this new nugget of information, scientists can be better equipped to understand how a cell is formed and learn how to replicate it.
Through this discussion of how life is created, many scientists get lost in the excitement of the possibility of reaching this achievement. However, Dr. David A. Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, says that the world should focus more on the permanent repercussions of this discovery. While these SpudCells might not be ethically dubious, their successors very much might. As further advancements blur the line that demarcates life, scientists have to decide how to handle an alien species native to a laboratory.
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