How Biologists Are Creating Life-like Cells From Scratch (nature.com) 42
Built from the bottom up, synthetic cells and other creations are starting to come together and could soon test the boundaries of life. From a report: Researchers have been trying to create artificial cells for more than 20 years -- piecing together biomolecules in just the right context to approximate different aspects of life. Although there are many such aspects, they generally fall into three categories: compartmentalization, or the separation of biomolecules in space; metabolism, the biochemistry that sustains life; and informational control, the storage and management of cellular instructions.
The pace of work has been accelerating, thanks in part to recent advances in microfluidic technologies, which allow scientists to coordinate the movements of minuscule cellular components. Research groups have already determined ways of sculpting cell-like blobs into desired shapes; of creating rudimentary versions of cellular metabolism; and of transplanting hand-crafted genomes into living cells. But bringing all these elements together remains a challenge.
[...] Research groups have made big strides recreating several aspects of cell-like life, especially in mimicking the membranes that surround cells and compartmentalize internal components. That's because organizing molecules is key to getting them to work together at the right time and place. Although you can open up a billion bacteria and pour the contents into a test tube, for example, the biological processes would not continue for long. Some components need to be kept apart, and others brought together. "To me, it's about the sociology of molecules," says Cees Dekker, a biophysicist also at Delft University of Technology. For the most part, this means organizing biomolecules on or within lipid membranes. Schwille and her team are expert membrane-wranglers.
Starting about a decade ago, the team started adding Min proteins, which direct a bacterial cell's division machinery, to sheets of artificial membrane made of lipids. The Mins, the researchers found, would pop on and off the membranes and make them wave and swirl1. But when they added the Mins to 3D spheres of lipids, the structures burst like soap bubbles, says Schwille. Her group and others have overcome this problem using microfluidic techniques to construct cell-sized membrane containers, or liposomes, that can tolerate multiple insertions of proteins -- either into the membranes themselves or into the interior.
The pace of work has been accelerating, thanks in part to recent advances in microfluidic technologies, which allow scientists to coordinate the movements of minuscule cellular components. Research groups have already determined ways of sculpting cell-like blobs into desired shapes; of creating rudimentary versions of cellular metabolism; and of transplanting hand-crafted genomes into living cells. But bringing all these elements together remains a challenge.
[...] Research groups have made big strides recreating several aspects of cell-like life, especially in mimicking the membranes that surround cells and compartmentalize internal components. That's because organizing molecules is key to getting them to work together at the right time and place. Although you can open up a billion bacteria and pour the contents into a test tube, for example, the biological processes would not continue for long. Some components need to be kept apart, and others brought together. "To me, it's about the sociology of molecules," says Cees Dekker, a biophysicist also at Delft University of Technology. For the most part, this means organizing biomolecules on or within lipid membranes. Schwille and her team are expert membrane-wranglers.
Starting about a decade ago, the team started adding Min proteins, which direct a bacterial cell's division machinery, to sheets of artificial membrane made of lipids. The Mins, the researchers found, would pop on and off the membranes and make them wave and swirl1. But when they added the Mins to 3D spheres of lipids, the structures burst like soap bubbles, says Schwille. Her group and others have overcome this problem using microfluidic techniques to construct cell-sized membrane containers, or liposomes, that can tolerate multiple insertions of proteins -- either into the membranes themselves or into the interior.
membrane-wranglers (Score:1, Offtopic)
Sorry, that's my porn name.
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I dunno why you got modded off-topic; at least you have the scale right! That's better than most manager around here.
Not even close! (Score:1)
Cell mechanics is much more than just spurting some lipids in a cell-like looking blob.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_tYrnv_o6A
Do we have to evolve to be declared Life? (Score:2)
Re:Do we have to evolve to be declared Life? (Score:4, Informative)
If we can keep it from changing,
You can not. If the cell reproduces via any form of DNA replication/duplication, then there is no possible way that it could not evolve. Once you have self-replication, it ether dies or evolves to suit the environment that it exists in. Every DNA copy operation contains a statistical probability of getting an error in the new sequence, and that error could be better for survival, or not. Most likely not, if you are starting from a very short and simple genome, but only the good errors persist into the future generations where these errors eventually accumulate to make larger changes in function.
Re:Do we have to evolve to be declared Life? (Score:4)
If we can keep it from changing,
You can not.
If the cell reproduces via any form of DNA replication/duplication, then there is no possible way that it could not evolve.
This is 100% false. We as humans would be filled with messed up copies of our DNA if it didn't encode a checking sequence that prevents bad copies from happening. When a bad copy occurs, the cell commits seppuku. [wikipedia.org]
Once you have self-replication, it ether dies or evolves to suit the environment that it exists in. Every DNA copy operation contains a statistical probability of getting an error in the new sequence, and that error could be better for survival, or not.
Correct but when you have replication checking then you avoid this problem. We only get cancer because the cells lose this ability due to the recursive telomeres copy problem (which copies all but the last telomere every single time).
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We only get cancer from cell replication over time because the cells lose this ability due to the recursive telomeres copy problem (which copies all but the last telomere every single time).
fixed that for me.
This only applied to cells replicating too many times. Your cells can incur DNA damage by exposure to certain molecules, especially hydrocarbons. Some DNA damage can invoke cellular suicide but much of the time, it's simply replaces part of the sequence and it's now part of your DNA. Sometimes this can disrupt the cellular suicide programming which means it's going to be cancer once the replication limiting DNA is also damaged.
However, given the correct sequencing, you could effectively
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Biologist, here.
>We as humans would be filled with messed up copies of our DNA
We are [wikipedia.org].
> We only get cancer because the cells lose this ability due to the recursive telomeres copy problem
Do you mean end replication problem? "Recursive" and "copy" do not mean anything. Cancer is not even close to what you are saying. In fact, if it was that simple, then cancer would have been cured long time ago. Cancer is caused by genetic, epigenetic, ... changes causing an abnormal growth of the cells. Consequently,
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If we can keep it from changing,
You can not. If the cell reproduces via any form of DNA replication/duplication, then there is no possible way that it could not evolve.
This is 100% false. We as humans would be filled with messed up copies of our DNA if it didn't encode a checking sequence that prevents bad copies from happening.
We accumulate errors throughout our lives, and that accumulation of errors, and some estimate this to be well over 20 mutations in a single cell that is required before one actually gets cancer. But, you only need one cell to go bad.
Get this, every case of cancer is unique because of the specific mix of mutations that the patient has acquired over their lifetime. Cancer requires many multiples of genes to be disabled and/or modified before it gets out of control. Your "Programmed Cell Death" (PCD) is one
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you missed it: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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Our error-correcting mechanisms are not perfect. Thus there is still a chance of mutation that can be passed on to children and then grandchildren. It's small, but it's still present.
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you missed it: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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If we can keep it from changing,
You can not.
If the cell reproduces via any form of DNA replication/duplication, then there is no possible way that it could not evolve.
This is 100% false. We as humans would be filled with messed up copies of our DNA if
Your fallacy is that you added a false dichotomy between what we are, and what is "messed up." We are the messed up copies of what we were in the past. That's why it looks "100% false" to you; it contradicts your value judgement. But it is a neutral statement without values; nature has no preference.
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>evolves to suit the environment
Nope. There is random modifications and if it gives a reproductive advantage -- at the population level, not individual --, these modifications persist in the population.
Jumping of a building, do not make you grow wings. The ones having wings survive and that, increase there chance of reproduction.
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>evolves to suit the environment
Nope. There is random modifications and if it gives a reproductive advantage -- at the population level, not individual --, these modifications persist in the population.
Jumping of a building, do not make you grow wings. The ones having wings survive and that, increase there chance of reproduction.
Correction accepted; as I did not mean to imply that an individual cell "evolves" in any way. The individual merely survives or not, and reproduces or not. It's always the aggregate population over many generations that evolves to suit the environment. Change that environment and it will, in turn, change the type of mutations that become beneficial to that population. That is all I was trying to say.
Direct means selective pressure (Score:2)
The environment does not direct the evolution. [...] 3/ environment exerts some selective pressure
"Direct" is a metaphor for this selective pressure.
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We just make them all male. That worked in Jurassic Park, right?
I thought they made them all female?
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In the article it mentions their definition of life includes "must be able to evolve". But is that true, and do we really want this synthetic 'life' to evolve? If we can keep it from changing, then we run less risk of releasing something into the wild that's potentially dangerous.
It isn't actually meaningful to the risk. They have to define "life" that way to exclude fire.
Defining life is an area of complete failure in the sciences.
A kind of nanotech that could do a lot (Score:1)
'Nanotech' is a word that was used a lot a couple of decades ago, not so much anymore. (Replaced by AI and quantum computing?) But who knows? They could end up crafting microbes to eat up the plastic in the oceans maybe, or make a contribution to fighting global warming. Here's hoping.
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Nanotech means technology that is reasonably measured in nanometers. For example, when you see things like "7nm process" or "10 nm process," that is the nanotech that you were hearing about in the past. At that time, the processes were larger; micro-scale.
Quantum computing is also a real thing.
Playing With Fire (Score:2)
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.
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My first thought reading this actually was "And that's how humanity ends." But i'm generally a pessimist.