Testing how well chemical cells work could provide answer to recognising life

Scientists plan test for manmade cells of the future - News release

For immediate release
27 October 2006

A test to see how well manmade chemical 'cells' can pass themselves off as the real thing could help scientists solve the problem of defining when something is alive, say researchers writing in this month’s issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Work to build chemical cells, known as 'chells', which are made using chemical components and act just like cells in plants or animals, is in the very early stages of development. Scientists hope one day to develop a man-made chemical system which carries information, replicates and sustains itself like a biological cell, and which is – to all intents and purposes – alive. To do this they will need a method to test how life-like their cell is. The team, including Dr Joachim H. G. Steinke  from Imperial College London's Department of Chemistry, suggests that the best way to do this is to test if the manmade cell can be detected as a 'fake' when it is set up to interact with natural biological cells.

The researchers show how this kind of test could work in the same way as the so-called 'Turing test' which is used in artificial intelligence to ascertain if a computer is capable of successfully imitating thought. The Turing test is also known as an 'imitation game', and involves a person communicating with both another person and a computer using an instant messaging service: if the first person cannot distinguish between the human and the computer from their responses, the computer is said to have successfully imitated thought.

The researchers envision applying this idea to testing the quality of manmade chemical cells by setting up a test where a manmade chemical cell and a regular biological cell have to interact with a second biological cell. If the chemical cell has been successfully built, it should be able to 'fool' the second biological cell into interacting with it in exactly the same way as it does with the normal cell.

Dr Steinke explains: "This kind of test will play a vital role in assessing how effectively scientists' attempts to build a workable chemical cell are progressing, but it could also help to advance our understanding of the meaning of life, or at least of what life is not. In effect, if we can build a cell which behaves so much like a regular cell that even another cell cannot tell it’s a fake, then you could argue that we would have created an artificial cell that is 'alive'."

The team hope that in the future chemical cells will be built that can do things their biological equivalents cannot, since these 'chells' will not be constrained by the limitations of biological systems, such as only working at certain temperatures.

"One of many possible future uses for this kind of chemistry would be to create a functioning 'chell' which converts sunlight into chemical energy much more efficiently than plant cells, which are only 1-2 per cent efficient," adds Dr Steinke.

-Ends-

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Danielle Reeves
Imperial College London Press Office
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Email: Danielle.reeves@imperial.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

1. "The imitation game – a computational chemical approach to recognising life" Nature Biotechnology, Volume 24, Number 10, October 2006.

Leroy Cronin (1), Natalie Krasnogor (2), Benjamin G Davis (3), Cameron Alexander (4), Neil Robertson (5), Joachim H G Steinke (6), Sven L M Schroeder (7), Andrei N Khlobystov (8), Geoff Cooper (1), Paul M Gardner (3), Peter Siepmann (2), Benjamin J Whitaker and Dan Marsh (8).

(1) The Department of Chemistry, the University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ.
(2) The School of Computer Science and Information Technology, the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG8 1BB.
(3) The Department of Chemistry, Chemistry Research Laboratory, Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TA.
(4) The School of Pharmacy, Boots Science building, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD.
(5) The School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JJ.
(6) The Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ.
(7) School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, School of Chemistry, the University of Manchester, PO Box 88, Sackville Street, Manchester, M60 1QD.
(8) The School of Chemistry, the University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD.
(9) The School of Chemistry, the University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT.

2. Consistently rated in the top three UK university institutions, Imperial College London is a world leading science-based university whose reputation for excellence in teaching and research attracts students (11,000) and staff (6,000) of the highest international quality. Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and management and delivers practical solutions that enhance the quality of life and the environment - underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture. Website: www.imperial.ac.uk