{"id":5658,"date":"2026-07-06T18:11:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T18:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=5658"},"modified":"2026-07-06T18:11:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T18:11:57","slug":"first-synthetic-cell-capable-of-replication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/06\/first-synthetic-cell-capable-of-replication\/","title":{"rendered":"First synthetic cell capable of replication"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-5659\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/spudcell-300x203-1.jpg?resize=300%2C203&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"203\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are some important caveats, but this seems like a significant step forward in synthetic biology (for better and for worse).<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"mission-copy reveal visible\">Prof. Kate Adamala and her team at the University of Minnesota have built SpudCell, a cell-like system constructed entirely from known chemical components that can perform a complete cell cycle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mission-copy reveal visible\">The system contains 36 purified enzymes, a 90,000 base pair genome spread across nine separate DNA molecules, and a lipid membrane. SpudCell is able to grow, replicate its genome, divide, and undergo selection and competition across multiple generations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mission-copy reveal visible\">Unlike earlier work on minimal cells that carved down living cells, SpudCell is built entirely bottom-up from individually purified, non-living components. It is the first time such a system has demonstrated a complete cell cycle.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/biotic.org\/research\/spudcell\/\">Biotic | SpudCell<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are some important caveats, but this seems like a significant step forward in synthetic biology (for better and for worse). Prof. Kate Adamala and her team at the University of Minnesota have built SpudCell, a cell-like system constructed entirely from known chemical components that can perform a complete cell cycle. The system contains 36 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1tg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5661,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5658\/revisions\/5661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}