Scientists React to the Lab-Made, Yet Lifelike, SpudCell

Have you ever had that one scary dream about some mad scientist in their evil lair cooking up a shapeless, growing mass? Just me?

No? Just me?

It turns out a team of synthetic biologists led by Dr. Kate Adamala at the University of Minnesota just created the first cell-like structure called SpudCell. It sounded like my nightmare come true, but upon further research, I realized that Spudcell might have much more potential for good than I originally thought. [It sounded like my nightmare come true, but scientifically speaking, SpudCell isn’t considering “living.”]

Scientifically speaking, SpudCell isn’t considered living because it relies on scientists intervention feeding it and assisting in cell division and evolution. But philosophically, it is much harder to define life. In fact, Dr. Adamala says, “We don’t have a universal definition of life that would fit everything we instinctively consider living.”

The potential artificial life holds is immense, from making biological weapons to disease-curing advancements in medicine. SpudCell brings up much deeper philosophical questions: should we be creating life that could have disastrous effects on the world? Is it ethical to create something living that we could kill like flipping a switch? How do we prevent it from getting into the wrong hands?

SpudCell is “great, but it’s a beginning” for the many more discoveries that are sure to come. We must weigh the costs of artificial life, but we can’t shy away from the great opportunities SpudCell has created for fields beyond synthetic biology.