World-First Working Eukaryotic Cell Made From Plastic

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."

Comments

Re:Not a cell

[cnettel]

In other words, they made very neat bags of mostly water.

No, they did not

[jw3]

Again, the press release is misleading. Worse, it fires back on the real and great accomplishment by suggesting it is something that it is not.

The scientists managed to squeeze key enzymes into different minuscule compartments of a cell-like structure. That in itself is fascinating and a great achievement; but that doesn't make an eukaryotic cell. It does not replicate; it does not synthesize the lipid-like structures; it lacks a cytoskeleton and a complex organization; the reactions going on are few and very simple. It is as much an eukaryotic cell as a neural net algorithm is a working brain.

However, it has working enzymes within little bubbles within other bubbles, which can be called "compartmentalization", a feature of eukaryotic cells that distinguish them from bacterial cells.

Nonetheless, this is a considerable achievment that has both a practical side and is a working model with potential to make in vitro experiments helping to understand the processes that go on in the real cells.

Re:Hmmm

[oodaloop]

I think some things have RNA instead of DNA. And some things that are non-living have DNA, like viruses (or viri? whatever).

Re:nerdgasm

[fisted]

Actually, modding it informative would have been funnier than modding it funny