Synthesis of a Genome

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It might be worth just thinking about the actual process of this because I think people have in mind going in there with tweezers and a scalpel. We are never picking up one strand and another strand and with our hands putting it. Nobody has hands that small. They're molecules. There's nothing that we can make that small. And also when we say synthesizing a genome, is it like we literally have the complete list GCTTA? That's how we're making DNA these days.

Scientists can’t quite agree on how to define “life,” but that hasn’t stopped them from studying it, looking for it elsewhere, or even trying to create it. Kate Adamala is one of a number of scientists engaged in the ambitious project of trying to create living cells, or something approximating them, starting from entirely non-living ingredients. Impressive progress has already been made. Designing cells from scratch will have obvious uses is biology and medicine, but also allow us to build biological robots and computers, as well as helping us understand how life could have arisen in the first place, and what it might look like on other planets.

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Katarzyna (Kate) Adamala received her Ph.D. working with Pier Luigi Luisi at the University of Rome and Jack Szostak at Harvard. She is currently an assistant professor of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of Minnesota. She is a member of the Build-A-Cell international collaboration, which brings together multiple groups to work on constructing artificial life.

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