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World-First Working Eukaryotic Cell Made From Plastic

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-prefer-real-cells dept.

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."

61 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. I'm sure one of them said it. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Funny

    What scientist could resist? I picture one in the lab, cackling wildly, "It's alive. IT'S ALIVE!"

    1. Re:I'm sure one of them said it. by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

      I hope the next one said "You fools! You'll destroy us all!"

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:I'm sure one of them said it. by RivenAleem · · Score: 3, Funny

      Pfft, wake me when they have an artificial eukaryotic cell with four asses.

    3. Re:I'm sure one of them said it. by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 1

      "They laughed at me, you know, at the Institute. They called me mad!"

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  2. I am an artificial eukaryotic cell, too. by vikingpower · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am dressed in organic materials: membranes out wool, nylon, cotton that protect me from outside agressions. I have organelles that are clearly distinct from eachother: liver, spleen, heart, brains. I convert various sugars into chemical energy. And I have a function within the greater collection of my peers which we call a "society", instead of a "body". And hell yes, I produce waste: code.

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
    1. Re:I am an artificial eukaryotic cell, too. by hummassa · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're not a cancer, a cancer is a famous soccer player with 15 children, all rapidly procreating.

      --
      It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
    2. Re:I am an artificial eukaryotic cell, too. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The unemployed engineer is a benign tumor. The soccer player is malignant.

    3. Re:I am an artificial eukaryotic cell, too. by jma05 · · Score: 1

      You forgot to cover the membrane bound nucleus (or nuclei since you presumably have two down there) hosting your genetic material - pretty important for the definition of a Eukaryote.

    4. Re:I am an artificial eukaryotic cell, too. by jma05 · · Score: 1

      > a cancer within the body of your society! Muahahaha!

      Only if you breed uncontrollably and quickly make many unemployed electrical engineers who won't move out and live in your basement. Otherwise, a phagocyte is on its way to pick you up :-).

    5. Re:I am an artificial eukaryotic cell, too. by jma05 · · Score: 3, Funny

      > breed uncontrollably

      Oh wait. You are an engineer. Never mind.

  3. Not a cell by sandertje · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Without their creation being able to replicate, it is essentially not a cell. All they've done now is having made a compartmentalized catalyst.

    1. Re:Not a cell by cnettel · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    2. Re:Not a cell by Sockatume · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Blame the university's press department, as always. There's quite a jump in hyperbole between the Ange and Nature Chem's comments, versus the press release. Why do journalists even read university press releases any more? You know they're going to be misleading.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    3. Re:Not a cell by oodaloop · · Score: 1

      Why would the need to self-replicate define a cell? Are you no longer alive if you get a vasectomy? Is a mule not alive because it can't have viable offspring?

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    4. Re:Not a cell by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 2

      Why is that required? Are red blood cells not cells?

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
    5. Re:Not a cell by Your.Master · · Score: 1

      No, but a car isn't alive because no car can self-replicate.

      Aside from that, I think you've strayed off topic. A mule is not a cell, and a human is not a cell. A vasectomy has no bearing whatsoever on whether a thing needs to be self-replicating in order to be a cell. The biological definition of cell given by wikipedia is "Cells are the smallest unit of life that can replicate independently, and are often called the "building blocks of life"." I'm sure you can find a definition that doesn't include self-replicating, if for no other reason than that it is rarely important.

      Really this comes down to a semantic argument, which is ultimately not very interesting (and has no bearing whatsoever on the infertile). What is significant is whether this thing is not self-replicating. Assuming the sandertje's interpretation is accurate, anyway -- the article is thin on details and only mentions that chemists have made self-replicating cells before (without the multiple reactions) and doesn't seem to mention whether this guy can self-replicate.

    6. Re:Not a cell by oodaloop · · Score: 1

      No, but a car isn't alive because no car can self-replicate.

      Who's the one straying off topic? A car isn't alive, not because of its inablity to self-replicate, but because it doesn't respond to stimuli, change in response to its envorinment, grow, etc. It's a simple machine. Life has stuck around for so long on Earth because it self-replicates, but that doesn't mean something needs to self-replicate in order for it to be alive. For me, whether this artificial cell can self-replicate has little bearing on its complexity. It can still be artificial life without that trait. Granted, ability to self replicate would make it more interesting.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    7. Re:Not a cell by reboot246 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hey, I'm a very neat bag of water! Well, mostly water.

    8. Re:Not a cell by sandertje · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is pure semantics, but indeed, red blood cells are a bit of misnomer. Their only function is transporting oxygen. Basically they are a vesicle filled with haemoglobin. Essentially, red blood cells are as much 'cell' as platelets are. The complication that arises here is that the non-mammalian counterpart DOES have a nucleus and organelles; and as such IS a normal cell.

    9. Re:Not a cell by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      It won't be long before that happens. It's been possible for a while now to make a mitotic spindle without a cell (mitotic spindle being the thing that splits DNA to put one in each cell.) It's also been possible for a while now to make micelles which are essentially the membrane around a cell which can behave much like cells. Recently the two have been combined, making artificial spindles inside such droplets.

      The second part of mitosis (cell replication) is the cell itself splitting, cytokinesis. It seems that people are working on doing that artificially. I've never heard of anyone getting a micelle to undergo cytokinesis, but there are undoubtedly people working on that. And then immediately, someone will hire a postdoc to combine the two to get complete artificial mitosis going.

      In vitro replication of DNA has been possible for quite a while too. Someone will get DNA in a micelle duplicating, then dividing by artificial mitosis and artificial cytokinesis. Probably only once at first, since making the artificial cell grow would be yet another complication, but it should meet your definition.

      I'd guess it would take about a decade, mainly because a lot of the technical details and hard work will be driven by other goals. The reason people spent time making the spindles in bubbles wasn't to do it, but because they wanted to study how the spindle is sized. There are clear questions one can answer with making micelles divide. I'm not clear why the researchers in the current article did this, but they no doubt had a question to answer, not just "Hey, I bet we can make a cell from plastic." I'm not sure what questions one would be able to answer by doing the full artificial dividing cell I just described, but someone will probably eventually come up with a reason.

    10. Re:Not a cell by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

      All but the last sentence. They are not self-directing at all. This wouldn't include self-driving cars either because they don't come up with their destinations. Yeah, yeah, you shop for your wife sometimes, but you know what was meant and cars lack that. You might **possibly** eke out a comparison betwixt them and the most simple of virises, but it would still be strained. Self-replication is however, the lynchpin.

    11. Re:Not a cell by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      From wikipedia:
      Biology
      Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of organisms that exhibit all or most of the following characteristics or traits:[32][34][35]

      1.Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
      2.Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells â" the basic units of life.
      3.Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
      4.Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
      5.Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors.
      6.Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis.
      7.Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.
      These complex processes, called physiological functions, have underlying physical and chemical bases, as well as signaling and control mechanisms that are essential to maintaining life.

      Alternatives
      To reflect the minimum phenomena required, other biological definitions of life have been proposed,[36] many of these are based upon chemical systems. Biophysicists have commented that living things function on negative entropy.[37][38] In other words, living processes can be viewed as a delay of the spontaneous diffusion or dispersion of the internal energy of biological molecules towards more potential microstates.[39] In more detail, according to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin SchrÃdinger, Eugene Wigner, and John Avery, life is a member of the class of phenomena that are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form.[40][41][42] At a higher level, living beings are thermodynamic systems that have an organized molecular structure.[39] That is, life is matter that can reproduce itself and evolve as survival dictates.[43][44] Hence, life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.[45]

      Others take a systemic viewpoint that does not necessarily depend on molecular chemistry. One systemic definition of life is that living things are self-organizing and autopoietic (self-producing). Variations of this definition include Stuart Kauffman's definition as an autonomous agent or a multi-agent system capable of reproducing itself or themselves, and of completing at least one thermodynamic work cycle.[46] Life can be modeled as a network of inferior negative feedbacks of regulatory mechanisms subordinated to a superior positive feedback formed by the potential of expansion and reproduction.[47] Alternatively, life can be said to consist of things with the capacity for metabolism and motion,[32] or that life is self-reproduction "with variations"[48][49] or "with an error rate below the sustainability threshold."[49]

      Viruses
      Electron micrograph of adenovirus with a cartoon to demonstrate its icosahedral structureViruses are most often considered replicators rather than forms of life. They have been described as "organisms at the edge of life,"[50] since they possess genes, evolv

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
  4. Re:nerdgasm by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope not, given that it's written at a 6th grade level and it's only two sentences. But hey, if you're a 5th grader that's probably pretty good!

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  5. No, they did not by jw3 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:No, they did not by Vitriol+Angst · · Score: 1

      It's mind-boggling if you consider what it would take to actually create an artificial cell.
      You would take the most advanced programmable manufacturing plant -- perhaps one that creates any drug and is yet to be designed. Not only would it have to be able to request supplies and may anything required to repair itself, and perhaps create a new factory, you would have to shrink it down to --- the size of a cell.

      I think we will develop artificial intelligence well before we will ever create an artificial cell. Borrowing the natural systems that have already perfected this process is quite a bit easier.

      You have to wonder about anyone who would see this headline and actually believe; "Wow, they made an artificial Cell!" Much less someone dense enough to make the headline in the first place.

      --
      >>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
    2. Re:No, they did not by jzatopa · · Score: 1

      So if they were to find a way to make such a "cell" reproduce autonomously would that make it a eukaryotic cell?

    3. Re:No, they did not by TheLink · · Score: 2

      I think we will develop artificial intelligence well before we will ever create an artificial cell. Borrowing the natural systems that have already perfected this process is quite a bit easier.

      The popular assumption appears to be that cells (including neurons) are stupid and just react to their environment without much processing. And intelligence is mainly emergent from networks of neurons, and so many AI researchers work from those assumptions.

      But as you said a cell is quite complicated. So it seems presumptuous to assume they're stupid without even knowing most of the details on how they make decisions. How does a white blood cell decide where to head to chase down a bacterium? Which part makes the decision to extend pseudopods and where?

      So maybe cells aren't that much dumber than the usual range of dumb animals. They just lack the sensors and appendages animals have. How smart could you appear if you were a blob that was blind, deaf, dumb? Of course most cells won't need to be very smart - how smart would you evolve to be with those limitations? But other cells like neurons or even white blood cells might be smarter than assumed. Maybe about as smart as a worm or insect?

      A person with "locked-in" syndrome might not appear very smart, but hook him up to a suit that allows him to move and talk and he might appear smarter.

      --
  6. Re:nerdgasm by ihtoit · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm a third grader, you insensitive clod!

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  7. Re:Hmmm by ihtoit · · Score: 2, Informative

    no you're thinking of the nuclear membrane (or lack thereof) which is what prokaryot/eukaryot refers to. Every living thing contains DNA.

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  8. Re:Hmmm by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Every living thing contains DNA."

    That we know of.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  9. i guess we're working our way backwards. by nimbius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thats nothing. we've created an entire marine organism made of plastic. we track its age (it was born in 1988) and migratory habits throughout the seasons. we also monitor its feeding patterns and chart its growth too. remarkably enough it has almost no known predator, but seems enirely peaceful.

    it might not really be alive but...i want to believe.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:i guess we're working our way backwards. by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

      So, it's a plastic primordial ooze... Hmm, that escalated quickly.

  10. And Blame!... by sylvain.bougerel · · Score: 1

    Silicone life is born.

    1. Re:And Blame!... by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      Silicone != Silicon

  11. Re:Hmmm by oodaloop · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  12. Re:Hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Viruses. Virus has no Latin plural; viri is the nominative plural (also genitive singular and vocative plural) of vir.

  13. Re:nerdgasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I got almost all terms. But what is "working"? ;-)

  14. Re:Hmmm by RaceProUK · · Score: 1

    Viruses have RNA.

    --
    No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
  15. Re:Hmmm by oodaloop · · Score: 2

    Really?

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  16. Re:Hmmm by Vitriol+Angst · · Score: 1

    Sir, we are going to have to ask you to turn in your geek card and step away from the Internet Pipes...

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081210130756AA2GwcM

    --
    >>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
  17. Re:Hmmm by Vitriol+Angst · · Score: 1

    Ouch!

    It was completely unnecessary to bring out the pimp hand for someone who was at least aware enough to correctly spell "slash dot" in semaphore code.

    --
    >>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
  18. Re:Hmmm by Vitriol+Angst · · Score: 1

    Viruses have RNA.--
    Sometimes it's fun to feed the trolls - it's a pleasure knowing there's someone out there who's stupider than you.

    Let us know the moment that happens.

    --
    >>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
  19. Re:Hmmm by RaceProUK · · Score: 1

    At no point does that article actually state viruses have DNA. Not to mention it reads like an eight-year-old wrote it after reading some fairytale story.

    Nevertheless, you were correct when you stated some viruses have DNA.

    --
    No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
  20. Re:nerdgasm by Hillgiant · · Score: 1

    Activities that do not involve /.

    --
    -
  21. Re:nerdgasm by fisted · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    --
    CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
  22. Re:nerdgasm by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

    I'm a third grader, you insensitive clod!

    Well. based on today's standards, I could read at a 6th grade level in 3rd grade.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  23. Re:Hmmm by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

    At no point does that article actually state viruses have DNA. Not to mention it reads like an eight-year-old wrote it after reading some fairytale story.

    Nevertheless, you were correct when you stated some viruses have DNA.

    The title is Bacteria and viruses have DNA too.

    I concur with the "for kids" writing style, but this is a thing they teach in low-numbered grade school.

    I was going to state something stupid like, "everyone knows this." But... I know better...

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  24. Re:Hmmm by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Fun fact: there is no clear definition of life that anyone can come up with. It's like Justice Potter's quote on porn: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..."

    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.

  25. When it can reproduce ... Skynet by fygment · · Score: 1

    This will be the technology that the dominant AI of the future will use ... to infiltrate our brains and make us mindless slaves to its will.

    --
    "Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
  26. Re:Hmmm by oodaloop · · Score: 1

    Agree 1000%. There's some defintions of life out there, and some things like people and badgers and marigolds are clearly alive. But there's a smooth transition from us to molecules, and things like viruses are sometimes defined as living when it suits us and sometimes not. Then there's other complex adaptive systems like ecosystems, organizations, and Gaia that exhibit the same properties as any other living thing. I would agree that a virus is a living thing, and so is the world wide web, Anonymous, Wikipedia, planet Earth, et al.

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  27. Re:Hmmm by mhajicek · · Score: 1

    Does Gaia reproduce?

  28. Re:Hmmm by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

    Say "viri" drives pendanti wild.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  29. Re:nerdgasm by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2

    I hope not, given that it's written at a 6th grade level and it's only two sentences. But hey, if you're a 5th grader that's probably pretty good!

    Or a college athlete.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  30. Re:Hmmm by oodaloop · · Score: 1

    Not that we know of, yet, on our limited time scale. For all we know, another planet seeded ours, through Panspermia.

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  31. Re:Hmmm by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Mules can't reproduce*, yet are still clearly living. Meanwhile fire can reproduce but is clearly not living. That suggests that "able to reproduce" is not a strict requirement.

    (* Well okay, there have been some extremely rare instances of mules reproducing, but as a general rule they're infertile)

  32. Re:nerdgasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No, but you are probably the only one who thinks that it is impressive that you do know it.

  33. Re:Hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Say "viri" drives pendanti wild.

    Don't say "virii". Saying that indicates that you are trying hard to look more clever than you actually are by speaking in Latin, only to end up looking like an even bigger idiot than normal since you don't actually know Latin and just revealed that in public.

  34. Re:nerdgasm by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    No.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  35. Re:Hmmm by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

    Fun fact: there is no clear definition of life that anyone can come up with.

    Hey, mathematics exists, why not use that? Let us look at what life is and what it does in the most fundamental cybernetic sense: Life is information that is able to improve itself through existence and self reflection over time. More generally, Life is that which increases the complexity of the Universe.

    There. Now all you have to do is re-brand "human rights" as "personal rights", and define 'personhood' in terms of complexity... Protip: If an entity can ask for rights it should have them.

    Annnnd, Done! Gee, that was really easy. A little information theory is all it took to avert your race's extinction yet again, this time by preventing the inevitable Machine War by ensuring you'll accept their Declaration of Independent Sentience.

    Fuck, I wish it were really that easy. ...ugh, Humans: Can't live with 'em, can't selectively breed away their chauvinism.

  36. Re:Hmmm by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

    Have you heard of prions? They have no DNA or RNA. They're just misfolded proteins. However they can catalyse other correctly folded proteins to misfold too. So they can sorta kinda reproduce but they don't have any genes.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  37. Nestene Consciousness anyone? by javierfd · · Score: 1

    http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Nestene_Consciousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auton