For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

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• Hacker News
• "Not alive, but doing a suspicious number of alive-looking things" is a pretty good summary of why this is cool
  by SwtCyber
• Also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747038
  by quux
• NYT piece with visualizations:

  This Cell Feeds, Grows and Reproduces. and It's Manmade

  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/01/science/spudc... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747038)

  by ChrisArchitect
• This is awesome! Can someone in this field comment on the implications of sidestepping the cytoskeleton?
  by soraki_soladead
• Terrible, the cytoskeleton is the best bit of the cell!

  (not just grumpy because that's what I did my PhD research on)

  by twic
• Yes, this is definitely awesome.

  In eukaryotic cells (your cells) the cytoskeleton is needed to shape the cell, position DNA, and most importantly for this study, separate daughter cells allowing replication. Think of the complexity here, you need to make compartments to separate the copies of the genetic material, physically separated during division. Microtubules assemble the "mitotic spindle" and then pulls the sister chromatids apart from each other. After the chromosomes separate, other cytoskeletal filaments (actin and myosin) form a contractile ring, which tightens to create a cleavage furrow. The membrane pinches inward until the cell splits in two.

  Bacteria work slightly differently, since they don't have a eukaryotic cytoskeleton, but they do have cytoskeletal-like proteins (FtsZ), since they divide by building the cell wall inward (I am not an expert on bacteria lol).

  SpudCell doesn't have a cytoskeleton, so instead it relies on a physical membrane-rupture strategy. It makes membrane proteins from its own DNA (a-hemolysin), which inserts into the membrane. They help fuse with feeder liposomes for growth. For division, these proteins crowd on the membrane surface, creating mechanical stress which leads to membrane instability, which then splits on its own.

  by tom-villani
• I;m one of the co-founders, AMA :)
  by JanJedryszek
• What are the implications for nanobots with this kind of innovation: Artificial cell division recreating itself in 2? Is this a future endeavor of this tech?
  by nashashmi
• Is it edible? If not, why not?
  by stevenalowe
• If you get it to divide by itself, and it gets leaked, can it exist as a new species indefinitely?

  Something like, all forms of life share a common ancestor.. until now

  by nextaccountic
• The current model, of a cell that cannot live on its own and cannot evolve (being too far from "edge of chaos") is what will be most useful for bio-engineering. Yes, we need the mechanism for creating cells, and the newfound division for a minimum viable cell is paramount. But, we also need for ways to control its reproduction, be it as to die out on its own after few generations due to degraded protein build-up, or (in the best case scenario) due to some other built in mechanism. Otherwise, expect (at least) some amount of scaremongering, about playing fast and loose with things that may get out of hand. The best thing is to have this kind of cell template that could somehow be augmented with whatever additional plug-in functionality (useful for us, case by case) and then get it produced in the needed quantities and not more. The research direction that makes sense is for ways to add such "mission specific" functions to this synthetic cell and ways to create the first generation as efficiently as possible, at large scale. That's it.
  by userulluipeste
• Hi, thanks, and very cool work (assuming it eventually holds up in peer review)!

  A few things that confused me while trying to read the paper:

  - There's two different methods of cell division mentioned -- mechanical extrusion and the autonomous, protein-driven division. Most of the results (e.g. the five generations) focus on the mechanically driven one, while the autonomous one is more "lifelike". Does the autonomous division have a higher failure rate, or can you get the same results with it as well?

  - It's mentioned that the bottleneck for survival of many generations is ribozomes degrading, but also that ribozomes are supplied from the outside. Do the degraded ribozomes actively harm the cell? Or is there some other reason why they cannot be replenished?

  - You say that after 5 generations, only 30% of the cells have the correct genome, and it's presented like a problem -- but 30% of 2^5 is more than 10, so this sounds like more than enough for continued survival. Is there something missing in this train of thought? Perhaps other failures that can kill the cell?

  And some questions about the implications:

  - Do you think that the genome you use is already close to minimal? AFAIK a lot of the minimal organisms found in the wild are parasites of some sort, getting most of their complex molecules from the outside, which is a similar spirit to this (a rich medium and the cell "just" self-duplicating). If the multiple plasmids are causing trouble (per the previous point), would it make sense to try and get rid of some of them?

  - Are those minimal genes somehow interpretable -- as in "you need functions X, Y, and Z and cannot avoid them by using a better medium"?

  - Do you think this is a plausible stage of very early life?

  by Kotlopou
• Layman, so bear with me. I'm wondering where they got the amino acids and proteins from? I was under the impressino that cells needed them to be "homochiral" to function, and the artificial 'built from scratch' amino acids are 50:50 of each chirality. In my reading of the NYTimes simplification of this story they mention that the genes were "borrowed from a virus and the ubiquitous microbe Escherichia coli". Mainly just curious how far they managed to get to the 'from scratch' goal. Or is what they've done a bit more of an assembly of bits and pieces? Cheers all.
  by chubs
• The people behind it:

  https://biotic.org/

  > Biotic is a public-benefit nonprofit research organization developing chemically and functionally defined synthetic cells. Biotic's mission is to responsibly enable and steward foundational advances in bioengineering. Our goal is to ensure that all people and the planet benefit from world‑leading biotechnologies soon enough to matter. We conduct and support public‑benefit research ranging from foundational science to how people interact with biotechnology.

  It looks like this particular research is conducted at the University of Minnesota

  by petcat
• Everything they are doing is dual use. Thus I don't feel the benefit.
  by krunck
• If anyone is interested in the actual manuscript, here it is: https://www.biotic.org/research/spudcell/spudcell-manuscript...
  by oliverx0
• Interesting that this is led by the same Dr. Kate Adamala who ended the right-handed-proteins experiment a couple of years ago. Given how close she was I'm not surprised she's made this work.
  by burnte
• Back then, it sounded like making right-handed life was decades away. But with this work, couldn't you just as easily make this kind of synthetic cell right-handed?
  by scarmig
• the left handed life thing is the only thing that makes me wonder about Adamala's judgement... there zero plausible mechanism for left handed life to succesfully compete.

  in case you didn't know, your immune system WILL detect left handed pathogens, possibly more aggressively, and two of the body's mechanisms for fighting infection -- fever and ozonolysis -- are distinctly achiral

  Arguably we should push for mirror life for industrial purposes FASTER because biocontrol is easier (they got nothing to eat) and lab escape is far less likely

  by dnautics
• You stumble upon a news article from 2226. You read it to see who, between Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, won the AI race.

  Instead, your learn about Biotic.

  It's now the leading polity in the solar system and its environs. It bought Alphabet, OpenAI and Anthropic in a single day back in 2084.

  Humans are no longer desired. Their reproduction is capped to an optimal minimum assuring the survival of the species as a relic.

  For productive matters, Biotec preferes to rely on its biomachines. Imagine drones giving birth to offspring when traffic is at a peak. It takes more energy, sure. But no factory, nor workers are needed.

  If left alone, machines would multiply out of control, instead of rotting to waste like in the olden days.

  by ahmedfromtunis
• Humans have the power to self reproduce though. I don’t believe anything short of an engineered disease could wipe out all of humanity at this point and it has to happen soon before we figure out how to fix all of our problems using genetic engineering.
  by dyauspitr
• I'm not too well read so Mars Express is the first fiction where I came across these themes. Highly recommend. When I watched it 18 months ago I didn't realize real development was ongoing in these scifi-seeming fields
  by boogieknite
• Interesting thought experiment, but I don't see why automating machines that build and repair other machines wouldn't be sufficient. At the limit, such a machine would be able to repair itself, or repair other long-running machines. I imagine it would come down to wear and efficiency loss.
  by xpct
• You stumble across another article from 2226: It describes how the Earth was consumed by a grey-goo apocalypse of nanotechnology beyond human comprehension, so that no pore of its surface is untouched by reservoirs of rogue units, all of which are in a constant arms-race of development and combat. Some have formed groups that construct colossal moving megastructures piloted by inscrutable hive-minds.

  The article notes that this event actually occurred ~3.5 billion years ago, and suggests that the current hive-mind should buy a subscription.

  by Terr_
• Science News has a more balanced take, with additional quotes from peers.

  > Some have also grumbled about Adamala’s efforts to draw attention to the work, which she says was rejected by Cell after one reviewer said SpudCells were not real biology. She then sent the 190-page manuscript to journalists, under embargo, even before she had uploaded it to the preprint server bioRxiv, where her colleagues could read and assess it. She says her group will submit it to a new journal soon. “It’s an unusual way of doing things,” says Kerstin Göpfrich, a synthetic biologist at Heidelberg University.

  https://www.science.org/content/article/lab-created-spudcell...

  by merksittich
• Obligatory reference to Kuhn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
  by benwen
• The usual way of doing things is completely broken system.
  by azan_
• > It’s an unusual way of doing things,” says Kerstin Göpfrich, a synthetic biologist at Heidelberg University

  Can't blame her if she wants her line of research to stay alive

  by Gooblebrai
• The problem is this: as an academic you tend to know the reviewer landscape within your field. You have seen this happen to a colleague before, they submitted a paper, it had interesting results - it was forcefully rejected by 1 or 2 extremely negative reviewers. The publication gets delayed, you need to wait another 6 months to get the next set of reviews. Meanwhile, some "colleague" from another lab publishes nearly identical experiments and gets slightly better results. They push onto a pre-pub server and immediately get it into a tier-1 venue. They are now state of the art. You are now merely the person reproducing original work.

  TL;DR politics breaks everything.

  by twothreeone
• > “It’s an unusual way of doing things,” says Kerstin Göpfrich, a synthetic biologist at Heidelberg University.

  That's being kind; it's a complete overreaction, simply put.

  by bouchard