SpudCell is the supposed artificial cell that left CNN, among others, hyperventilating: “Scientists say they have built a cell from scratch for the first time that can feed, grow and replicate like a natural cell.” Have you ever noticed that sentences that start out with “Scientists say” usually aren’t headed anywhere good?
Now, writing in the New York Post, Casey Luskin instructs science reporters to take a deep breath and relax:
SpudCell isn’t alive — if we mean to describe something that can survive in a natural environment, metabolize nutrients, and perpetually self-replicate. And it was hardly made “from scratch.”
Let Us Count the Ways
Dr. Luskin ticks off the ways that SpudCells fall short as “life.” The media hype fails to understand that
Life excels at multiplying. But SpudCell can only survive for a handful of replications before its machinery degrades and ceases to function. This is because SpudCell cannot produce ribosomes — highly complex biomolecular machines that all living cells make to manufacture proteins. SpudCell must be fed a steady diet of ribosomes — all originally made by other real cells.
SpudCells also lack a functional metabolism. As a result, they must be suspended in a “broth” of biomolecules which allow them to perform fundamental functions.
Another area where SpudCell fails to qualify as life is its inability to fully pass on traits to future generations. As bioengineer Tara Daens stated, “It doesn’t reliably pass on its genetic material.”
None of this negates SpudCell’s impressive abilities, of course. But even if we’re playing God, we can’t become Him.
The fictional Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s 19th-century horror novel came closer to creating life, based on misunderstandings of her own about “experiments of Dr. [Erasmus] Darwin” who “by some extraordinary means” induced “voluntary motion” in a piece of pasta.
The punchline: “SpudCell is a testament not only to the cleverness of man, but also a powerful reminder that life originates only through intelligent design.” Read the rest at the New York Post.