Scientists have made a cell from scratch. One day, that could help solve some of the world’s biggest problems.
It took nature more than 500 million years to create the first living cell, and billions more years before intelligent creatures like humans appeared. Now, scientists have built a tiny cell from scratch in a laboratory. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have made the world’s first completely synthetic cells. This is an amazing step in science.
Some people believe that life is made possible by a mysterious force beyond science. But this new research suggests that life may simply come from the right mix of molecules and energy.
Of course, we should be careful. Artificial intelligence isn’t really “intelligent” the way humans are. It works by spotting patterns in huge amounts of data. The scientist leading the synthetic-cell project has also said she isn’t ready to call these new cells truly “alive”. That’s probably because she doesn’t want to exaggerate what her team has achieved.
Still, these tiny cells can do three important things that living things do: they can feed, grow and make copies of themselves. They are missing one important ability—they can’t yet make ribosomes, the tiny factories inside cells that produce proteins. So the work isn’t finished.
The good news is that many scientists can now work together to improve these cells because the Minnesota team has decided not to patent the technology. Six Asian countries—China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia—have already started a 10-year project to build better synthetic cells. Scientists around the world should cooperate instead of letting politics get in the way.
Some people worry that creating artificial life is dangerous. When scientist Craig Venter first tried to build a synthetic cell in 1999, critics said he was “playing God”. Years earlier, scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep heard the same criticism. It’s normal to be nervous about new discoveries, but history shows that many scientific advances have improved our lives.
In the future, scientists may be able to design special cells that solve real-world problems. Imagine cells that turn carbon dioxide from the air into clean fuel. Such inventions could help fight climate change and reduce our need for oil and coal. Designing these useful cells may be much easier than searching through billions of natural microbes to find one that already does the job.
Craig Venter’s team created a synthetic cell by modifying a natural bacterium. Sixteen years later, Minnesota scientists have built one entirely from scratch. That’s real progress. Along with advances in AI and other technologies, this could mark the beginning of a whole new age of biology.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
