News
Published online: 06 December 2004; | doi:10.1038/news041206-2

Artificial cells take shape

Philip Ball
Bacterium-sized 'protein factories' are a step along the road to synthetic
life.

Primitive cells similar to bacteria have been created by US researchers.
These synthetic cells are not truly alive, because they cannot replicate or
evolve. But they can churn out proteins for days, and could be useful for
drug production, as well as advancing the quest to build artificial life
from scratch.

Vincent Noireaux and Albert Libchaber of the Rockefeller University in New
York have managed to package up some of the molecular machinery of a cell
inside an artificial, bacterium-sized membrane. And they can perforate the
membrane with holes that allow nutrients and energy-rich molecules to get
into the cells from the surroundings.

These protocells contain all the machinery needed to generate proteins from
their raw ingredients (amino acids), so they could be used as miniature
factories, to produce proteins of industrial and medical value.

Such proteins, for example, insulin, are routinely produced by genetically
engineered bacteria bred in fermentation vats. But artificial cells would
make much simpler protein factories, perhaps more easily tailored to make
specific products.

Full Text at Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/041206-2.html

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