Scientists Built Life in a Lab But Is It Really Alive?
stand on one’s own two feet: to take care of yourself and live independently, without help from others
For the first time, scientists have built a living cell in a lab. A team in Minnesota assembled it from only a few hundred lifeless molecules. A normal cell is built from billions. Researchers had made simple cell parts before, but no one had ever built a complete cell that runs the full cycle of life. This one does. It feeds, it grows, it copies its own genes, and then it splits into two, roughly once every 12 hours.
But this cell cannot stand on its own two feet. Scientists have to feed it themselves and keep it at exactly 86 degrees, or it dies within hours. It cannot even produce its own proteins. Kate Adamala, who led the team, described it as “an incredibly wimpy organism that right now basically does nothing other than to eat and occasionally make a daughter cell.”
So is this cell alive? It eats, it grows, and it reproduces, yet many scientists still say no. One argued that Adamala had built a cell without truly creating life, because real life must sustain itself and evolve over time. This little cell can do neither. Still, one scientist called it “a big step forward to this holy grail of making a living thing out of dead components.”
Sample sentences
The new restaurant relied on loans from friends and family to get started, but within a year it could stand on its own two feet.
When the government cut its funding, the theater had to learn to stand on its own two feet.
Good parents slowly teach their children how to stand on their own two feet.
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For the First Time, a Cell Built From Scratch Grows and Divides (Quanta Magazine)
