News media are currently buzzing about “SpudCell,” claiming that scientists have finally created life in the lab. CNN, for example, offered this hyped headline, “Scientists say they have built a cell from scratch for the first time”—the implication being that the chemical origin of life is virtually solved.
There are only three problems with these claims.
First, what they built isn’t life.
Second, scientists didn’t really make it.
And third, though SpudCell is a brilliant accomplishment for biotechnologists, it doesn’t demonstrate life arising by natural causes. If anything, it shows that life requires intelligent design.
Biologists have found life notoriously difficult to define, but some key elements include the ability to stay alive, the use of metabolism to process nutrients, and faithfully transmitting traits to offspring. SpudCell arguably does none of these things—at least not well enough to be considered “alive.”
According to Biotic, the creators of SpudCell, it “runs for 5-10 generations before the machinery degrades.” In other words, SpudCell doesn’t have what it takes to stay alive and necessarily will “die” after just a few rounds of “cell splitting.” There’s a very good reason for this.
SpudCell cannot produce ribosomes—extremely complex biomolecular machines that truly living cells make to manufacture proteins. As a consequence, SpudCell must be fed a steady diet of ribosomes already produced by real bacterial cells—something that would never be available from primitive chemicals on the primordial Earth. But since SpudCell cannot maintain the cellular machinery needed to make proteins, it quickly dies after its artificially ingested ribosomes break down.
And what about metabolism—the ability to process nutrients from the environment? In a preprint paper, SpudCell’s creators admit, “Our synthetic cells have a very limited metabolism… complete metabolic independence will require a larger genome.” Or, as ScienceAlert states, SpudCells, “can’t … regulate their metabolism, so they rely entirely on substances and components in the liquid medium in which they float.”
This is most curious. SpudCell’s creators are boasting that it has “a much smaller genome” than any other known living cell. That smallness makes perfect sense—and is utterly unimpressive—given that SpudCell lacks many basic traits that cells need to live.
If SpudCell could manufacture ribosomes or properly metabolize nutrients, it would need a much larger and more complex genome. It only gets off with having a small genome because it can’t perform basic functions needed to be alive.
SpudCell is like a Frankenstein monster that can’t make its own blood, and must constantly be given transfusions to stay alive. Sure, it might wander around for a few days like a zombie, but eventually if you don’t keep supplying new blood it will die.
Life must also be able to pass on traits to future generations. Yet The New York Times reports that because SpudCell’s “genetic information is split across seven DNA molecules… important genetic material isn’t always passed in full to the next generation.”
For these reasons and more, even The Times admits, “most synthetic biologists agree that no artificial cell has yet passed that threshold between lifelike and alive — and SpudCell’s originators do not claim to have created life.”
Yes, SpudCell does have some impressive abilities. Its genome encodes enzymes that perform some key functions needed for building proteins (like transcribing DNA), molecular machines for copying DNA, and special proteins that help control cell membranes.
But guess where all the information to build these complex structures came from? You guessed it: other living cells. The creators of SpudCell accomplished a fascinating technical feat, but only by stealing functional information-rich genes from real living cells—not by creating life “from scratch.”
There’s an old joke about scientists who challenge God claiming they’ve figured out how to create a man. They thrust their hands into the soil and say, “We start with some dirt...” God immediately rejoins, “Hold on—you’ve got to get your own dirt!”
This is a perfect analogy for SpudCell. It borrows all the “dirt” it needs—ribosomes, enzymes, and genetic information—from pre-existing living bacteria. All the crucial elements were not created from scratch in the lab.
Despite these deficiencies, many scientists are applauding SpudCell as a bioengineering feat. That’s fair—but isn’t that the whole point?
SpudCell shows that if you want something to live, intelligent agents must provide it with all the necessary genetic information and a just-right mixture of molecules in a carefully controlled environment. Goldilocks would be proud.
Whatever SpudCell does, it only works because of intelligent design.
Casey Luskin is a scientist and attorney with a PhD in geology, and the associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.