What is it about?

Have you ever wondered if life could exist outside the Earth? Or about how difficult is it for life to form chemically? Or if it could it be created/synthesized today in a terrestrial laboratory? Or, perhaps asked if we could create self-reproducing synthetic cells without any biochemistry? These are fascinating questions that have intrigued humans for centuries. They are beginning to find surprising answers. Using non-biochemical, carbon based, and commercially available chemicals one of which is sensitive to light, we have created a blend that when illuminated with green light generates micron size cells that mimic natural life. That is, we have succeeded in booting life from scratch without using ANY biochemical molecules. This is a new form of life: not natural but artificial. These cells are far simpler than natural bacteria but are about their size. They self-reproduce via spores and form a second generation. The second generation then uses the same spore-based processes to produce more children. And so on. These cell-like systems are powerful examples of "life beyond biochemistry". From their autonomous creation to their self-reproduction they follow the same rules as natural life. Except that by design no biochemistry is involved and they are chemically far simpler..

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Why is it important?

This is the first time that such a system has been demonstrated in a laboratory. It demonstrates the creation of life, a new type of life, not biochemical life. Just as observing the natural flight of birds led to the invention of artificial powered flight using the principles of aerodynamics, here, the full description of natural life has been condensed into a few physico-chemical principles, and we have implemented them using carbon chemistry, but not biochemistry. As a consequence, a fully human-made photochemical polymeric system has been created that reveals how chemistry and physics unify these principles to generate natural living behaviors. By design, no biochemistry is involved. This suggests that biochemistry, the very complex branch of chemistry present in all living systems on Earth today, may have been preceded by far simpler, but surprisingly powerful, chemistry associated with simpler molecules present in the earlier Earth and which evolved into us. This provides a plausible scenario for the evolution from chemistry to biology or from simple to complex life, and solves the huge difficulties with understanding the initial steps in the creation of life on Earth. But it also implies that life can originate in many places of the Universe: that we are not alone. It shows that it is highly probable that life exists in numerous locations throughout the Cosmos. Moreover, we can now create artificial life in our laboratories, opening the doors to harnessing novel and entirely unforeseen technologies based on Artificial Life.

Perspectives

The results presented here are merely one instance of the potential capabilities of organic materials. This biochemistry-free example is but one of a potentially vast number of related non-natural polymeric systems. The fundamental scientific implications of such research can be profound. The study of these systems provides new and valuable insights into the nature of life beyond our planet, guiding us in identifying potential locations and methods for its detection. By incorporating their findings into the instrumentation of the next-generation observatories dedicated to the search for life in the cosmos, we can unlock new possibilities in this exciting field. But this is not the full story. The results and applications of this research go beyond astrobiology. Indeed, new forms of the physico-chemical phenomenon of life, have been synthesized from molecules created ad hoc from scratch. They do not involve the complexity of biochemical molecules, they are far simpler, and yet these synthetic systems concomitantly display all the basic properties of natural Earth life. Thus, the application of our results and techniques have the potential to lead to new technologies emerging from this scientific advance and to be applied in problems that range from new materials, to CO2 capture to the control of microplastics, to just mention a few.

Juan Perez-Mercader
Harvard University

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This page is a summary of: Self-reproduction as an autonomous process of growth and reorganization in fully abiotic, artificial and synthetic cells, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2412514122.
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