Reacción a "Scientists in the United States claim to have built a synthetic cell that can feed and reproduce"

To begin with, I must say that Kate Adamala is well known in the field of synthetic biology and, with her many international initiatives, is a highly driven individual. The work they’re making public through this somewhat unorthodox channel—not through a journal, but through a preprint platform without peer review—is an achievement that, if confirmed to be accurate, is significant; it marks a turning point in the field.

We’ve already seen several such efforts. Craig Venter has already proposed several strategies for constructing artificial cells. The fundamental difference is that this approach, rather than proceeding top-down—starting with known cells like mycoplasma, which are very small, and reducing them—does the opposite: it’s a bottom-up construction, using elements taken from other cells, such as enzymes, ribosomes, and so on. It’s a complementary strategy.

The results they present strike me as quite spectacular because, with a relatively small number of components, they’ve managed to get the cells to divide. It doesn’t have much sustainability because the system isn’t capable of sustaining itself for very long, but still, it’s an important first step.

I think it’s important to highlight that they aren’t designing a cell from scratch, but rather building it from the minimal components necessary for it to exhibit the properties they describe—with all due caution, since the work, as I said, is being disseminated through non-traditional channels—but I believe it’s important to point this out.

I think it’s spectacular work within the field of synthetic biology.