Cell biology

Introducing the third vid in the Long Story Short series (on cell membranes) Rob Stadler comments: First, scientists have been working for decades to simplify existing life, trying to arrive at a minimal viable life form by jettisoning anything that is not essential from the simplest extant cells. The success of Craig Venter’s group is well known. Building on their efforts to produce synthetic life (“Synthia” or “Mycoplasma labritorium”) in 2010,1,2 in 2016 they introduced the current record holder for the simplest autonomously reproducing cell (JVCI Syn3.0).3 With a genome of only 473 genes and 520,000 base pairs of DNA, JVCI Syn3.0 can reproduce autonomously, but it certainly isn’t robust. Keeping it alive requires a coddling environment — essentially a Read More ›