Did Scientists Just Create Life from Nonliving Chemicals?

Joe Deweese, Ph.D.

Creation vs. EvolutionOrigin

 Article in Brief

Recently, a paper was posted on a preprint server that claims to have built a synthetic cell. This has led some to produce headlines claiming that researchers have built “artificial life” or similar claims. When the details are examined, the impressive biochemistry and molecular biology behind the experiment reveal that the products of this experiment are far from a living cell.

In 2010, headlines declared that scientists made “artificial life.”1 It became quite the buzz when scientists with the J. Craig Venter Institute developed their first version of the so-called “minimal cell.”2 As we would soon learn, the researchers had accomplished an amazing technical feat, but it was far from creating life. Instead, we learned that the researchers had to borrow from existing life all the instructions and machinery in addition to the actual cell structure for their “artificial life.”

Fast forward to 2026, headlines buzz again with questions like, “Did scientists just create life?” While this latest research is again technically very impressive, it is a far cry from creating new life. Interestingly, we are hearing about this research, not after it is published in a high-profile journal following peer review, but because it was placed onto what is known as a preprint server called bioRxiv (pronounced bio-archive). This is where researchers can upload their research manuscripts and allow other researchers to see and study their work before it gets published. Many researchers are utilizing this avenue to get their work in front of the research community more quickly. They can post a preprint of their article while it makes its way through the peer review system, which can take months and, in some cases, more than a year!

The research paper in this case is called “A Chemically Defined Synthetic Cell Capable of Growth and Replication,” which seems to be an impressive title.3 The claims made based upon the paper by some news sources and scientists may tend to give the sense that these researchers have created life. But what did they actually do?

Lead researcher Kate Amadala and her team nicknamed it “SpudCell.”4 The cute name refers to an experimental system they have set up that uses lipids to make a compartment (like what surrounds living cells) and insert into this system a series of components to give this “cell” the ability to perform some of the functions of living cells. The authors are clear in their text: SpudCell metabolizes nutrients in only an incredibly limited sense—it’s not designed to. The desire here was to try to simplify things as much as possible. It is also worth noting that the researchers themselves do not claim to have created “life” but only a synthetic “cell.”

SpudCell is described as having a “genome” made of seven or eight small DNA molecules (called plasmids) totaling about 90,000 DNA bases that encode some proteins that the system needs. But to make the proteins from the DNA, they provide SpudCell with most of the machinery already assembled. For instance, the researchers provided ribosomes, which perform translation to build proteins from RNA information, built by bacterial cells. In addition, they provide a DNA polymerase to facilitate copying the DNA molecules.

The side effect of forcing a small genome is that many nutrients, proteins, macromolecules, and molecular machines (like the polymerase just mentioned) had to be provided to the system. In fact, the system had to be provided with high concentrations of these resources to avoid collapse. To help cells “grow” in size, the authors delivered new proteins and machinery needed by the cell using lipid vesicles that could fuse with the membrane, releasing their cargo and adding to the size of the membrane.

SpudCell cannot divide on its own. The researchers use two different ways to try to make it divide. One method essentially is like a mechanical extruder that squeezes oil through a strainer and gets smaller bubbles of oil—not life-like! The other mechanism used some proteins borrowed from biotechnology tools to try to force the “bubbles” to divide. The authors acknowledge that these systems are not perfect and do not allow for endless division. The first mechanism allowed about five divisions before things broke down. The second mechanism only allowed one division because there was no way to guarantee that components would be portioned out.

This brings up another important issue: SpudCell did not always divide evenly, meaning that DNA, proteins, and other components were not partitioned carefully as they are in real living cells. Further, the authors claim to have made a form of “selection” where they engineered a genetic advantage, which enabled SpudCells that received the advantage to predominate over others in the system.

While this is an impressive biochemical feat, it begs the question: if it takes this much effort to design something that isn’t even alive, what does that say about real life? The authors have gone to extensive lengths to carefully design every aspect of this experimental system. Their end product, while fascinating and impressive, is a far cry from anything considered truly “alive.” While I do not have an objection to researchers who want to explore the lower limits of living organisms to determine what makes something “alive,” I think we need to honestly reflect on what has been done here. These researchers have borrowed features of living cells and used tools created for research and combined them into a system that only vaguely looks like a living system.

Have researchers created synthetic life? No, not really. Did they create life from non-life? Definitely not. Nor does it appear that the ability to do so is getting any easier the more we learn about life. Instead, these researchers unintentionally demonstrated that extensive intelligent design is required even to engineer a highly simplified, nonliving cell-like system capable of performing a few basic functions.

Endnotes

1 “How scientists made artificial life” (2010), BBC UK, May 20, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8695992.stm.

2 D.G. Gibson, J.I. Glass, C. Lartigue, et al. (2010), “Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome,” Science, 329[5987]:52-56, https://www.jcvi.org/publications/creation-bacterial-cell-controlled-chemically-synthesized-genome.

3 Nathaniel J. Gaut, Christopher Deich, Brock Cash, et al. (2026), “A Chemically Defined Synthetic Cell Capable of Growth and Replication,” bioRxiv, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.01.735724v1.

4 Kai Kupferschmidt (2026), “Lab creates new kind of synthetic cell,” Science, 393[6806]:12-13, https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.aek1826.

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