ScienceIndian-American researcher develops artificial membranes which grow like living cells

Indian-American researcher develops artificial membranes which grow like living cells

An Indo-American scientist and his team have created artificial cell membranes which can start growing and continue to do so just like living cells. Naturally occurring molecules named lipids have long been known to automatically assemble into bilayer sacs called vesicles. But no one has been able to develop synthetic membranes (linings) composed of phospholipids (fat derivatives) that can keep multiplying.

Now Neal Devaraj, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at University of California San Diego (UCSD) and his associates have managed to develop cell membranes capable of mimicking some features of complex living organisms, in spite of being artificial in nature. These findings are expected to have a significant impact on synthetic biology and origin of life studies.

Artificial Cell Membranes

Also involved in the research were Michael Hardy, Jun Yang and Christian Cole from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Lev Tsimring and Jangir Selimkhanov from the BioCircuits Institute. The paper will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The time-lapse video posted below captures the strange and wonderful growth of the manmade membrane.

Scientists have also used a catalyst to make self-reproducing membranes. But as they increase in size, the catalyst gets diluted. Finally, there comes a point of time when expansion is no longer possible. This is the place from where Devaraj’s creation takes a different route. The newly designed continually growing, complex artificial cells can be formed with basic chemical building blocks.

After substituting the biochemical pathways normally employed in nature with just one autocatalyst, the UCSD team built an artificial cell membrane which synthesizes everything that is required in order to form newer catalytic membranes. In other words, they grow almost exactly like living cells.

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