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“This was where the field had been stuck for some time. Researchers before Adamala had figured out different ways to feed and grow synthetic cells and to replic
by JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
“This was where the field had been stuck for some time. Researchers before Adamala had figured out different ways to feed and grow synthetic cells and to replicate their DNA. But cell division is a different beast. A typical cell reorganizes its cytoskeleton — a network of protein fibers that provide structural support — to halve its DNA and split. Synthetic biologists could not figure out how to get their cells to undergo this complex process.
So Adamala decided to ditch the cytoskeleton. One day, while tearing through the literature, she came across an interesting mechanism in a paper (opens a new tab). By attaching protein tags to a cell membrane, the synthetic biologist Reinhard Lipowsky (opens a new tab) at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces attracted other proteins to crowd around and physically bend the membrane, forcing the cell to divide. Following this approach, Adamala tweaked a cell-membrane protein and tested it in her protocells. After several tries, it worked.“
This is the novel bit.
- ezst 4mo ago(opens a new tab)
- khriss 4mo agoYeah, I was wondering about that as well. Some weird AI transcriber?
- kridsdale1 4mo agoMore likely stuff that gets picked up when you copy and paste. I’ve seen that happen in the Google Chat electron app.
- satvikpendem 4mo agoMaybe an accessibility feature for TTS or blind users?
- sourpanda 4mo agothat's exactly it, not AI at all. If you inspect any link in the article it shows it as screen-reader-text
- jmaw 4mo agoI interpreted it as the author adding some internal dialog about how they want to do more research on the article/person in question so they were opening up a new tab so they could learn more. But I can see how this could certainly be some copy/paste artifact.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> some copy/paste artifact It’s this. I noticed after posting, found it funny and so left it in.
- dnautics 4mo agowithout criticising the work (its very cool and a very important first step) they haven't figured out division yet, which is kind of important.
- IAmBroom 4mo agoLots of missing steps before it is "created life". Which the researchers admit in the very start.
- SwtCyber 4mo agoThe interesting bit is that they didn't solve division by rebuilding the whole cytoskeleton, they sort of sidestepped it