The Importance of Essential Genes

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

"We're trying to make a copy of a living cell basically from non-living components. If you want to talk about artificial in the proper sense of the word it would be something that's designed to be different than what you're using as a template towards the current," he says. "There are many people that would consider a synthetic life form only something that is completely different from an existing architecture."

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.

Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal.

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.