Is the world ready for another possible Star Trek invention impinging on real life? Well, if researchers at Northwestern University continue with their most recent success story the real world may just have to get on board for that possibility.
Those researchers at Northwestern, in partnership with fellow scientists at the Harvard School of Medicine have created the cells responsible for generating all the necessary proteins and enzymes found in the human body. And, they have done it first, from scratch, and in a petri dish. What are those fantastic little cells? Ribosomes. Not only ribosomes, but synthetic in-vitro ribosomes. In the human anatomy and physiology ribosomes are cell organelles that consist of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and proteins. They are responsible for assembling the proteins of the living cell in the body.
While scifi fans may see the futuristic application of such technology in helping power spacecraft in today’s world this kind of marvelous synthetic organelle could bring about the development of new antibiotics that would be more potent in fighting diseases that target ribosome formation in the human body or it may be used to aid in a normal body’s routine ribosome construction. Most promising is the idea that this will likely lead to discoveries in bio-medical research not as yet even thought of.
For more details about this marvel of molecular research check out Science Daily.
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