Regina G. Barber

I'm Regina Barber.

Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

There are more cells in your body than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Our galaxy has a couple hundred billion stars, and inside me and you, each of us has around 30 trillion human cells.

30 trillion!

Cells are the fundamental building blocks of life.

But that doesn't mean they're simple.

Biology still doesn't have a full picture of how exactly a living cell works.

That's Kate Ademala.

A biological engineer at the University of Minnesota, she wants to do what only nature has done.

Build a cell from scratch.

A synthetic cell that replicates itself, but was made in a lab.

Drew Endy is an engineer at Stanford University and part of a community co-founded by Kate called Build a Cell.

This is an international group of researchers with the same goal, to build a cell from the bottom up, piece by biological piece.

If scientists can create cells, they can be programmed to do all sorts of things.

And scientists have touted the dream of synthetic cells as a new solution to the world's problems.

Synthetic cells could be programmed to act as part of new cancer therapies, can create new medicines easier and cheaper.

They could even be made to produce artificial photosynthesis to help with green energy projects.

And somehow, that would just be the beginning.