实验室创造出新型合成细胞

“SpudCells” can grow and divide but still have major limitations KAI KUPFERSCHMIDT I t’s just a microscopic water droplet surrounded by a fatty membrane and stuffed with chemicals and snippets of DNA encoding a mere 36 genes. But it’s also arguably the closest researchers have come to building a living cell from scratch. In work they posted online this week, Uni- versity of Minnesota Twin Cities synthetic biologist Kate Adamala and her team show their creation, nicknamed SpudCell, can grow by fusing with other droplets, replicate its genome, and divide. Researchers seeking to build synthetic cells from the ground up have either used the exist- ing molecules of life—DNA and fatty acids, for example—or developed synthetic building blocks. …