Kate Adamala

We learned a ton in the last decade, decade and a half now, about how molecules come together to form.

drive those very basic processes of biology.

So now we're finally starting to be able to conceptualize how we would go about not just making a synthetic genome, but booting up the whole thing from scratch.

And that gives us this full operational control over every element of it.

Yes.

Every time you build something, you're limiting the possibilities because you have to make choices.

And biology has been making those choices for over 3 billion years.

So we did reject a lot of possible alternatives.

And we're now revisiting all those alternatives.

That's the fascinating part of it is we can see what else can be done with biological parts.

It's very difficult for me to answer that because there is no good definition of life.

But we're getting to the point where if it quacks like a cell, moves like a cell, then it's starting to be a cell-like entity.

And that's where the field is.

We don't have the complexity that approaches the natural biological cell, but we have systems that can perform all the functions of a cell.

Mm-hmm.

Building a cell from scratch is absolutely essential to realize the promise of bioengineering.

When the field was started by Drew and others, they made huge promises.

They said we'll be able to make things with biology.

We'll be able to have this green economy.

Those promises have to be realized.