Artificial Cells Talk to Real Ones
The article was written by Jef Akst on February 1, 2017 and published on the website TheScientist.com. The source material for the article comes from the University of Trento, Italy and the experiment/lab work was performed by Sheref Mansy and her colleagues. The article speaks of how Mansy and his colleagues have created nonliving cells that were developed in his lab that have the ability to communicate chemically with living bacteria. The article goes into detail of the types of tests that were ran on the lab developed cells, the results of those tests and what it means for the future of creating artificial cells. Mansy can be credited as a valid source for the article. When reading the article on the internet, there are links imbedded in the article that you can click on that further his claims and back up his colleagues’ findings.
In the beginning of the article, we learn that the types of cells that were created were encapsulated chemical systems that were designed to carry out certain cellular pathways. For this experiment, bacterial quorum sensing pathways was the cellular pathway chosen. The artificially developed cells that Mansy and his colleagues created were able to pass a bacterial version of the Turing Test. The Turing Test, created by a mathematician named Alan Turing, is a test for computer created AIs. The test states that if a computer AI can trick the human testing it into thinking that they are speaking with a real person, then the computer AI has achieved true AI. The artificially developed cells were able to trick Vibrio fischeri, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and E. coli into thinking it was a living naturally created cell and began to express certain genes to respond to the living bacteria it was placed with.
After the experiment, Mansy was interviewed by the website ResearchGate.net. In the interview Mansy says, “It is absolutely possible to make artificial cells that can chemically communicate