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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 05 2018, @02:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the can-artifical-cells-fight-artificial-bacteria? dept.

From a report by researchers at University of California - Davis:Artificial Cells Are Tiny Bacteria Fighters :

"Lego block" artificial cells that can kill bacteria have been created by researchers at the University of California, Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering. The work is reported Aug. 29 in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

"We engineered artificial cells from the bottom-up -- like Lego blocks -- to destroy bacteria," said Assistant Professor Cheemeng Tan, who led the work. The cells are built from liposomes, or bubbles with a cell-like lipid membrane, and purified cellular components including proteins, DNA and metabolites.

"We demonstrated that artificial cells can sense, react and interact with bacteria, as well as function as systems that both detect and kill bacteria with little dependence on their environment," Tan said.

The team's artificial cells mimic the essential features of live cells, but are short-lived and cannot divide to reproduce themselves. The cells were designed to respond to a unique chemical signature on E. coli bacteria. They were able to detect, attack and destroy the bacteria in laboratory experiments.

Finally, assassination by virus is possible.

Journal Reference:
Yunfeng Ding, Luis E. Contreras-Llano, Eliza Morris, Michelle Mao, Cheemeng Tan. Minimizing Context Dependency of Gene Networks Using Artificial Cells. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2018; DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b10029


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Bobs on Wednesday September 05 2018, @11:21AM

    by Bobs (1462) on Wednesday September 05 2018, @11:21AM (#730686)

    I think I have seen this movie: It is all fun and games until somebody accidentally injects themselves with the contaminated version.

    More seriously, there is a different level of risk when dealing with microbes / organics.

    What are the odds of one of these binding with another cell/bacteria/virus that does reproduce and evolve?
      1 in a billion? 1 in a trillion?

    The estimate is that in 1 person's gut there are over 40 Trillion bacteria. (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160111-microbiome-estimate-count-ratio-human-health-science/ )

    So the odds of an 'unlikely' event happening are rather high. And we need to be much more careful because accidents will happen.

    It sounds like a promising approach - hope it evolves into something safe and effective.

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