Artificial cells and their potential uses a hot topic across the medical community, with some perceiving them as the key to impressive breakthroughs that could take place in the future.
Several discoveries how improved the mechanics and techniques which facilitate the production of artificial cells, but many details related to the way in which they can communicate or behave have remained elusive.
A team of researchers has managed to develop several artificial cells to communicate with each other across an impressive distance. This innovation is quite significant as it may pave the way towards the ability to distribute target treatments, improve the accuracy of medical tests, and much more.
It is known that biological cells can employ a rich selection of signaling methods to send messages to other cells or track the local environment. The team wanted to learn more about the way in which cells can send messages to other cells and coordinate their behavior in a unitary form.
More about the new artificial cells creation
According to one of the researchers who contributed to the project, living system deep connection to communicate, a trait that has inspired the team to cultivate communities of artificial cells.
One of the communities received the role of a sender as it could produce and release chemical signals while the other could collect and interpret the signs. For example, a noticeable trigger would activate the sender cells to release a signaling molecule.
This molecule can travel across the extracellular. When a receiver spots it, the message will be interpreted, and other triggers will be activated as a consequence. The distance between the sender and the receiver can influence the intensity of the signaling molecule, which tends to be lower as the distance is longer.
Scientists used enhanced receivers to make artificial cells communicate, which were fitted with a custom enzyme that could amplify the potency of the signal molecules, boosting their effective range and the accuracy of the received data.
