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Monday, May 20, 2013 |
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Current issue
The artificial cell, evolving
BY JOSEPH BONNER, KRISTINE KELLY & LYNN LOVE
“It’s like putting a drop of
vinegar in oil,” says physicist Albert Libchaber,
about the process of creating a self-contained artificial
bioreactor the size of a single cell.
Libchaber, the university’s Detlev W.
Bronk Professor and head of the Laboratory of Experimental
Condensed Matter Phsyics, and Vincent Noireaux, a postdoc in his
lab, began the process of building their own “minimal
cell” about a year ago, when they successfully expressed
proteins in synthetic vesicles.
Now they’ve taken a commonly used
compound known as a phospholipid to make an emulsion oil-extract
(the cellular extract being the vinegar). Synthetic vesicles with a
cell-free expression system inside are created when the emulsion
droplets are centrifuged into an aqueous background solution. The
background solution is the energy source for gene expression of a
small genetic network borrowed from the Escherichia coli
bacterium, and the lipid layer they created serves as a membrane to
contain extract. The scientists used a toxin derived from the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium to poke holes in the membrane, creating
artificial pores through which small molecules can pass.
Under these conditions, the vesicle’s
genetic apparatus produced protein products for up to four days,
the scientists report in the December 21 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. They even made their vesicle
membrane more “intelligent” by binding proteins to the
membrane with short peptides.
Applications for the project include
biosensors and cellular delivery. “Eventually we might be
able to send a vesicle to a cancer cell, where, if recognized, it
could produce a drug that would destroy the cell,” Libchaber
explains.
January 28, 2005
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