Cellularity

2 July 2026

This is a speculative video I made in 2010 about the difference between living and non-living things. In it, I imagine a “cellularity scale” – five functional milestones on the path towards developing synthetic living cells. At each step, these synthetic cells become more and more alive, until they can finally be classed as living.

If we are able to make a living cell from scratch out of simpler building blocks, then we would be able to understand the important transitions between non-living and living matter. At the same time, the work of developing these synthetic cells would be slow and iterative. No single lightning strike would transform inanimate matter into a living organism. So our understanding of life would also be gradual: a scale, not a threshold.

The ideas were developed in conversation with researchers Cameron Alexander, Natalio Krasnogor, Lee Cronin and Ben Davis, who at the time were building “chemical cells” as part of their artificial-life research.

Inspired by the news of the SpudCell from Adamala et al., I’ve upscaled the video to 4K and I’m reposting it to my YouTube channel.