New @AsimovPress episode with @KateAdamala. Her group made SpudCell, a synthetic cell capable of eating, growing, and dividing for at least five generations. Adamala thinks it might be able to reproduce perpetually by 2030; a feat she claims would finally make it “alive.” I flew to Minnesota and interviewed Adamala for about three hours. First, I wanted to understand the bottlenecks with SpudCell. What engineering changes will they make to get it to reproduce continuously? Second, Adamala is one of the leading opponents of creating mirror life, a program funded in part by Coefficient Giving through the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund. I pushed her on the idea that SpudCell, or the ability to create life from the bottom up, could uniquely enable the creation of mirror life. The third part of our interview was about understanding the point of all this. SpudCell, as you’ll hear, is nothing like cells on Earth today. I think it stretches the imagination to claim that making these cells teaches us much about biology! So I wanted to understand why this work matters, and Adamala had some really good responses about how SpudCell could expand life’s chemistry, enable us to make new types of medicines, and help biologize the economy. 00:00:00 – Opening 00:00:52 – SpudCell is not alive 00:05:16 – How SpudCell works 00:13:14 – Recycling bottlenecks 00:19:24 – Genome inheritance and cell division 00:34:19 – Bottom-up vs. top-down cells 00:40:38 – What synthetic cells could be used for 00:46:29 – Evolution and complexity 00:54:51 – Why Kate changed her mind about mirror life 01:01:27 – Why life evolved a single handedness 01:05:12 – SpudCell as an enabler for mirrored life 01:14:38 – Biotic 01:21:58 – China and 2050 goals