Keep pulling the thread on Dr. Kate Adamala.
The planet will not be habitable in 50 years unless civilization switches from using petrochemicals to using biology for all molecular manufacturing.
SPUD cells are the first example of a synthetic cell capable of both genetically encoded feeding and genetically encoded division.
Even when all the necessary proteins for a ribosome are expressed, they do not self-assemble into an active ribosome, and the reason for this failure is unknown.
The process of ribogenesis, or how to create new active ribosomes from their component parts, is the single biggest unsolved mystery in bioengineering.
SPUD cells are capable of selection, where an artificially introduced beneficial mutation can outcompete others, but they are not capable of spontaneous evolution.
The primary bottleneck for using SPUD cells to produce therapeutics at a useful scale is their inefficient replication.
The primary bottleneck for creating mirror life is the lack of a source for the necessary mirror-image building blocks, such as mirror ribosomes.
The scientific consensus is that a mirror cell should never be created because there is no way to do so safely.
All major global research initiatives aimed at building mirror cells or their enabling technologies have ceased.
Civilization must develop engineered life to produce all necessary molecules biologically, or it will be unable to maintain its current way of life.
Life is an emergent property that arises from the self-assembly of molecules under the right environmental conditions.
Natural biology cannot become a general-purpose technology because it is too complicated and has too many misunderstood dependencies.