[extropy-chat] 'Artificial life' comes step closer

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Researchers at Rockefeller University in the US have made the first
tentative steps towards creating a form of artificial life.
Their creations, small synthetic vesicles that can process (express)
genes, resemble a crude kind of biological cell.
The parts for their "vesicle bioreactors", as they call them, all come
from diverse realms of life.
The soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white.
The cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli,
stripped of all its genetic material.
This essence of life contains ready-made much of the biological
machinery needed to make proteins; the researchers also added an
enzyme from a virus to allow the vesicle to translate DNA code.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4104483.stm