German scientists have successfully grown an artificial genome with reproductive properties and this could help advance synthetic biology towards their ultimate goal — the creation of fully artificial organisms that can survive and reproduce like the real thing.
This new discovery was made by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. They outlined in a paper published in Nature Communications how they assembled genomes made up of blueprints for proteins and revealed that it can replicate 116 kilobytes of its own RNA and DNA.
Now, you might scoff at that amount because you can download gigabytes of information in mere minutes but this isn’t about watching your favorite series on Netflix, it’s about the possibility of creating artificial life!
This finding is an important step towards fabricating a complex life-like system that can not only reproduce itself but like living cells, consume nutrition and dispose of waste.
Isn’t the possibility of creating life (albeit artificial) like us a bit spooky?
