Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS FEATURE

How biologists are creating life-like cells from scratch

Built from the bottom up, synthetic cells and other creations are starting to come together and could soon test the boundaries of life.
  1. Kendall Powell

    1. Kendall Powell is a freelance science journalist in Lafayette, Colorado.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Illustration by David McLeod

There were just eight ingredients: two proteins, three buffering agents, two types of fat molecule and some chemical energy. But that was enough to create a flotilla of bouncing, pulsating blobs — rudimentary cell-like structures with some of the machinery necessary to divide on their own.

Access options

Nature 563, 172-175 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07289-x

References

  1. Loose, M., Fischer-Friedrich, E., Ries, J., Kruse, K. & Schwille, P. Science 320, 789–792 (2008)

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Litschel, T., Ramm, B., Maas, R., Heymann, M. & Schwille, P. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201808750 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Deshpande, S., Caspi, Y., Meijering, A. E. C. & Dekker, C. Nature Commun. 7, 10447 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Deshpande, S., Spoelstra, W. K., van Doorn, M., Kerssemakers, J. & Dekker, C. ACS Nano 12, 2560−2568 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Wu, F., van Schie, B. G., Keymer, J. E. & Dekker, C. Nature Nanotechnol. 10, 719–726 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Weiss, M. et al. Nature Mater. 17, 89–96 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Schwander, T., von Borzyskowski, L. S., Burgener, S., Cortina, N. S. & Erb, T. J. Science 354, 900–904 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Adamala, K. P., Martin-Alarcon, D. A., Guthrie-Honea, K. R. & Boyden, E. S. Nature Chem. 9, 431–439 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Gibson, D. G. et al. Science 329, 52–56 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Hutchinson, C. A. et al. Science 351, aad6253 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links