[an error occurred while processing this directive]
BBC News
watch One-Minute World News
Last Updated: Saturday, 18 December, 2004, 07:43 GMT
'Artificial life' comes step closer

By Roland Pease
BBC radio science unit

Jellyfish gene expression (PNAS)
The vesicles pushed out a green fluorescent protein






Jelly fish

A gene for green fluorescent protein taken from a species of jellyfish was the first they tried. The glow from the protein showed that the genes were being transcribed.

With a second gene, from the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, the researchers got their cells to make small pores in their walls.

M. genitalium bacteria
Some bacteria can survive with just a few hundred genes
These let nutrients in from the surrounding "soup", so that the cells could function, in some instances, for several days.

Albert Libchaber, who heads the project, stresses that these bioreactors are not alive - they're performing simple chemical reactions that can also happen in cell-free biological fluids.

But the research is one strand in a new field called synthetic biology, where the aim is to re-design entire organisms, or recreate them from scratch.

The bio-entrepreneur Craig Venter, who headed the commercial venture to decode the human genome, is currently trying to strip a bacterium down to the minimum set of genes needed for survival.

Synthetic virus

Two years ago, another team showed that polio viruses could assemble themselves from off-the-shelf chemical components mixed in a test-tube.




"This is rather philosophical," says Dr Libchaber.

"For me, life is just like a machine - a machine with a computer program. There's no more to it than that. But not everyone shares this point of view," he told the BBC.


He said: "If you take our system out of its environment, it just doesn't function."

Details of Libchaber's work with Vincent Noireaux have been published by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An explanation of the science

Scientists use DNA to make virus
13 Nov 03 |  Science/Nature
Q&A: First synthetic virus
12 Jul 02 |  Science/Nature
First synthetic virus created
11 Jul 02 |  Science/Nature
Genome man to create new life
21 Nov 02 |  Science/Nature
Synthetic virus nearing reality
21 Feb 01 |  San Francisco
Scientists call for life creation debate
10 Dec 99 |  Science/Nature

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites


Americas Africa Europe Middle East South Asia Asia Pacific