A New Way to Make Cells from Scratch

You are a marvelous menagerie of cells, the building blocks of life. Some 30 trillion or so of these cells compose the human body, each of them operated by a walled-off command center—the central nucleus stowing DNA—along with smaller bits of machinery surrounding it that work like little organs. These organelles are responsible for specific tasks like generating energy, making proteins, and disposing waste.

For decades, scientists have been trying to, but increasingly at applications. Scientists have shown that such artificial cells can be integrated into living systems and complex genetic circuitry and can perform specific tasks, such as , , , and .