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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.

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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.

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Nature 563, 172-175 (2018)

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

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