a hrefhttps:www.hoover.orgresearchlab-created-spudcell-marks-stunning-step-toward-building-life-scratch hreflangenLab-created SpudCell marks stunning step toward building life from scratcha

Its just a microscopic water droplet surrounded by a fatty membrane and stuffed with chemicals and snippets of DNA encoding a mere 36 genes. But its also arguably the closest researchers have come to building a living cell from scratch. In work posted online today, University of Minnesota Twin Cities synthetic biologist Kate Adamala and her team show their creation, nicknamed SpudCell, can grow by fusing with other droplets, replicate its genome, and divide.