The minimal cell: How is research coming on a simple, self-replicating “artificial” cell?
| July 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Such acell might shed some light on the origin of life, researchers hope. From Suzan Mazur at Oscillations:
Not to be outdone by Dutch, German and other Europeans now officially dabbling in synthetic cell research, America’s National Science Foundation has thrown its hat into the ring on funding synthetic cell development, per its April 18, 2018 letter to colleagues inviting proposals on the design and engineering of synthetic cells and cell components ($100K for relevant conferences, $300K re multicomponent subsystems, and up to $1M for research on the “pseudo-cell”). In May, following its call for proposals, NSF co-sponsored a synthetic and artificial cells roadmap meeting in Alexandria, Virginia with a handful of scientists already working in the field presenting and others in the audience looking to be educated.
Some highlights from a roundup of the May meeting:
As an engineer [Richard M.] Murray thinks replication is not so important in building a synthetic cell. Murray said it will be 30 years before the synthetic cell is developed and that no single lab can do it—it has to be a collaborative effort.
[Stanford bioengineers Drew] Endy considers the job 80% technical and 20% “anthropological”. He said making the cell would not be acheived just within academic circles. Endy also addressed motive in syncell development asking: “Are we simply going to invoke a name of building cells to do what we’re already doing?”
[University of Minnesota physicist Vincent Noireaux from 2014:] The ultimate goal of what we are doing is the minimal cell, but first we have to understand the relationship between information and self-organization. Where we are right now is that we have the most versatile and powerful cell-free transcription-translation system reported so far for synthetic biology applications.
Suzan Mazur: So time-wise where are you with development of a minimal cell that can self-reproduce?
Vincent Noireaux: It may be early to give an estimation of how many years. We have a system which we think is relatively close to a minimal cell. More.
Researchers keep discovering new systems in cells. Minimizing or obviating what has not yet been discovered is going to be a challenge…
See also: Suzan Mazur on mechanobiology, the next level of understanding of the cell
Cells are chock full of information systems, not just DNA
and
Origin of life: What we do and don’t know about the origin of life.
17 Responses to The minimal cell: How is research coming on a simple, self-replicating “artificial” cell?
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It should be easy to come up with a self-replicating cell. After all, mindless, lifeless matter accidentally slopped itself into a self-replicating, metabolizing cell without even trying to. Surely today’s scientists can easily do intentionally what stupid matter has done accidentally.
;o)
For a more realistic estimate of how far away we are from a a minimal cell that can self-reproduce, I suggest Dr. Tour’s assessment of the situation:
The ‘simplest’ cell ever found on earth is anything but ‘simple:
Very interesting topic.
bornagain77:
Interesting information in your comment.
Thanks.
Gedankenexperiment:
Take a half trillion bacteria in a nutrient broth.
Gently sonicate until the cell walls are disrupted.
Now you have the perfect warm pond. Nutrients, all the proteins, all the membranes, all the DNA and RNA.
Now lets just wait around and see how long before the first cell emerges.
Surely it should just self organize and burst quickly back to self replicating life……shouldn’t it?
I’m sorry maybe we should have set it all out in the sunlight so that the local entropy could be negative.
Latemarch,
Have you heard of Humpty Dumpty?
LUCA—The Last Universal Common Ancestor 1
The last universal common ancestor represents the primordial cellular organism from which diversified life was derived
http://reasonandscience.catsbo.....n-ancestor
minimal gene content of the first biological cell = 561 functional annotation descriptions = that means, it cannot be reduced further = irreducibly complex
A minimal estimate for the gene content of the last universal common ancestor
19 December 2005
A truly minimal estimate of the gene content of the last universal common ancestor, obtained by three different tree construction methods and the inclusion or not of eukaryotes (in total, there are 669 ortholog families distributed in 561 functional annotation descriptions, including 52 which remain uncharacterized)
A fairly complex genome similar to those of free-living prokaryotes, with a variety of functional capabilities including metabolic transformation, information processing, membrane/transport proteins and complex regulation, shared between the three domains of life, emerges as the most likely progenitor of life on Earth, with profound repercussions for planetary exploration and exobiology. The estimate of LUCA’s gene content appears to be substantially higher than that proposed previously, with a typical number of over 1000 gene families, of which more than 90% are also functionally characterized.a fairly complex genome similar to those of free-living prokaryotes, with a variety of functional capabilities including metabolic transformation, information processing, membrane/transport proteins and complex regulation, shared between the three domains of life, emerges as the most likely progenitor of life on Earth.
http://sci-hub.hk/https://www......0805002676
The Last Universal Common Ancestor: emergence, constitution and genetic legacy of an elusive forerunner
2008 Jul 9
LUCA does not appear to have been a simple, primitive, hyperthermophilic prokaryote but rather a complex community of protoeukaryotes with a RNA genome, adapted to a broad range of moderate temperatures, genetically redundant, morphologically and metabolically diverse.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2478661/
The proteomic complexity and rise of the primordial ancestor of diversified life
2011 May 25
Life was born complex and the LUCA displayed that heritage. Recent comparative genomic studies support the latter model and propose that the urancestor was similar to modern organisms in terms of gene content
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3123224/
Last Universal Common Ancestor had a complex cellular structure
OCT 5, 2011
New evidence suggests that LUCA was a sophisticated organism after all, with a complex structure recognizable as a cell, researchers report. Their study appears in the journal Biology Direct. The study lends support to a hypothesis that LUCA may have been more complex even than the simplest organisms alive today, said James Whitfield, a professor of entomology at Illinois and a co-author on the study.
http://news.illinois.edu/news/.....olles.html
Cenancestor, the Last Universal Common Ancestor
02 September 2012
Theoretical estimates of the gene content of the Last Common Ansestor’s genome suggest that it was not a progenote or a protocell, but an entity similar to extant prokaryotes.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12052-012-0444-8
Some Assembly Required: The Ingredients of Life
July 1, 2017
From analyses of bacterial microfossils, (some of which may be up to 3.48 billion years old) we know that the most primitive life was nearly as complex as today’s bacteria. Unfortunately, the (micro)fossil record can’t really tell us how we got from the simple chemicals to living, working, bacterial cells.
http://origins.case.edu/2017/0.....s-of-life/
#7 Otangelo Grasso:
Very interesting comment. Thanks.
#6 PeterA,
Humpty Dumpty?
#2 bornagain77,
Thanks for posting that information.
A synthetic cell that produces anti-cancer drugs within a tumor
February 13, 2018 by Kevin Hattori, American Technion Society
https://m.phys.org/news/2018-02-synthetic-cell-anti-cancer-drugs-tumor.html
The symposium is fully dedicated to research on the bottom-up assembly of a functioning synthetic cell from its molecular components.
Aim of this symposium is to bring together researchers worldwide to present and discuss the latest results in cutting-edge research on the synthetic cell, and its future scientific and technological perspectives.
Further, the symposium aims at further building up on the community involved in this endeavour at the international level.
http://www.syntheticcell.eu/20.....ell-basyc/
http://www.syntheticcell.eu/wp.....15;551.jpg
Rules of Life (RoL): Design and Engineering of Synthetic Cells and Cell Components (DESYN-C3)
https://nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18071/nsf18071.jsp
Single Cell Analysis Challenge
https://commonfund.nih.gov/singlecell/challenge
three major challenges in synthetic biology
https://www.creative-biolabs.com/blog/index.php/three-major-challenges-in-synthetic-biology/
Advances in biology and engineering have enabled the reprogramming of cells with well-defined functions, leading to the emergence of synthetic biology.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6368005_A_synthetic_biology_challenge_Making_cells_compute [accessed Jul 19 2018].
Does “reprogramming” indicate that it was programmed before?
How?
Is Dr Venter trying to create a biological cell completely from scratch?
Last he worked on a host cell with a synthetic component.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/genome-pioneer-craig-venter-is-trying-to-decode-death.html