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Recent findings in the field of synthetic biology promise creation of a viable artificial–natural cell communication system, scientists say.

The creation of artificial cells has been established as one of the major goals of the modern science. These cells may be used for sensitive drug delivery techniques, and are invaluable in understanding the origin of life, as well as determining the minimal requirements to make “a cell”.

While radical bottom-up approaches for creation of synthetic living cells are often challenging, a “semi-synthetic” approach has been shown recently to be more feasible. Experiments proved that semi-synthetic minimal cells (SSMCs) may be created by reconstituting minimal cell machinery (DNA, proteins, ribosomes etc.) within lipid vesicles – liposomes, therefore mimicking a natural living cell. Moreover, a recently published study suggests that SSMCs could be used for developing the first ever interface between artificial and natural cells, i.e. one-way or two-way communication system between an artificial cell and a natural cell.

Cell-to-cell communication is a stepwise process, which consists of the signal molecule production and transmission, as well as signal reception and interpretation on the other end. Therefore, a cell must be capable of producing and accepting particular chemical substances for communications with other synthetic or natural cells.

The authors of the study demonstrate that SSMCs may be manipulated into producing desired signaling molecules and receptor proteins. And, even though the signal transduction may be of varied complexity in natural systems, stripping down the design of the SSMCs to the basics creates a “minimal cognition” system, which is interesting on its own fundamental sense as well.

Creating such programmable systems could impact areas from advanced drug delivery to diagnostics, from gaining insight into basic cognition to novel artificial intelligence design. Although still at the blueprint stage, the strategy shows major promise in becoming a highly advanced biotechnological tool in the field of bio-chemical information technologies.

Source: www.technology.org