Artificial Cells - Fiction or Reality?

Various methods for creating artificial cells were tried at the Institute for Molecules and Materials (IMM). Wilhelm Huck, a professor at the same institute, is utilizing tiny droplets of solutions that have chemical composition very close to the cytoplasm of a real cell.
"Competing groups are working closer to biology; making cells from fatty acids, for example. We would like to do the same in the future. Another step would be to make cells that produce their own energy supply. We are also working on ways of controlling the movement of chemicals within the cell, towards organelles," says Huck. "By simulating these things, we are able to better understand living cells. One day we will even be able to make something that looks very much like the real thing."
One of the latest researches regarding this subject was held by Jan van Hest from Radboud University Nijmegen and Sébastien Lecommandoux at the University of Bordeaux. They have created artificial organelles by filling nano-spheres with chemical compounds and injecting them into a droplet of water. The future artificial cell needed a membrane, so the scientists covered the droplet with a layer of plastic polymer. The team has detected successfully the cascade of chemical reactions they planned, which made them the first chemists to build a cell out of plastic with working organelles. Reactions were detected using fluorescent colorant.

"Just like in the cells in our bodies, the chemicals are able to enter the cell plasma following the reaction in the organelles, to be processed elsewhere in the cell," explains Ruud Peters, PhD candidate on the project .
Angewandte Chemie and Nature Chemistry were the journals that published this research.