World-First Working Eukaryotic Cell Made From Plastic 109
Zothecula writes "Previously, chemists have managed to create artificial cell walls and developed synthetic DNA to produce self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cells. Now, for the first time, researchers have used polymers to produce an artificial eukaryotic cell capable of undertaking multiple chemical reactions through working organelles."
I am an artificial eukaryotic cell, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not a cell (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame the university's press department, as always. There's quite a jump in hyperbole between the Ange [wiley.com] and Nature Chem's comments [nature.com], versus the press release [www.ru.nl]. Why do journalists even read university press releases any more? You know they're going to be misleading.
Re:I am an artificial eukaryotic cell, too. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
"Every living thing contains DNA."
That we know of.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
There are definitely RNA based viruses. It's debatable whether they qualify as "alive." Self-replicating RNA mollecules likely preceeded any DNA based life, whether you'd want to consider RNA replicating "life" is up to you.
Personally I'd agree that RNA based viruses are living.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
(* Well okay, there have been some extremely rare instances of mules reproducing, but as a general rule they're infertile)