Scientists Build SpudCell, the First Synthetic Cell With a Complete Life Cycle

University of Minnesota researchers built SpudCell from non-living chemicals, and it feeds, grows, and divides across five generations, a synthetic biology milestone.

Scientists Build SpudCell, the First Synthetic Cell With a Complete Life Cycle University of Minnesota researchers built SpudCell from non-living chemicals, and it feeds, grows, and divides across five generations, a synthetic biology milestone. Aaron Rafferty July 01, 2026 Key Takeaways University of Minnesota researchers unveiled SpudCell on July 1, the first synthetic cell built entirely from non-living chemicals that runs a complete life cycle. SpudCell feeds, grows, copies its own genome, and divides on its own, and a faster-growing version outcompeted the original after five generations. Its genome is just 90 kilobase pairs across seven DNA plasmids, and the team launched a nonprofit called Biotic to keep the platform open. On July 1, researchers at the University of Minnesota said they built a cell from scratch that behaves like a living one. It feeds, it grows, it copies its own genome, and it divides into two. They call it SpudCell, and they assembled it from non-living chemical parts instead of editing an existing organism. That last point is what sets it apart. For years the field could copy single features of life in a dish, and in 2010 Craig Venter's team booted up a synthetic genome inside a hollowed-out bacterium. SpudCell is the first to run the full set of cell behaviors in a system built entirely from chemistry, according to the university's research brief and a new paper covered by Science and Quanta Magazine . The details are striking. SpudCell divides without a cytoskeleton, the internal scaffolding that has long stalled this work, by letting proteins crowd the membrane until the mechanical stress splits it. Its genome runs to about 90 kilobase pairs across seven plasmids, smaller than the 113 kilobase floor biologists once guessed a living