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

No? Just me?
Synthetic biologists led by Dr. Kate Adamala just created the first cell-like structure called
SpudCell. It sounded like my nightmare come true, but scientifically speaking, SpudCell isn’t
considered living because it relies on scientific intervention. 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 way humans recognize life is extremely
arbitrary.

The potential artificial life holds is immense, from making biological weapons to disease-curing
advancements in medicine. SpudCell raises 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.
Scientists should be cautious about ethical practices when conducting further research. 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.