It would seem that the creation of artificial life is the lot of fantastic works. But developments in this area have been going on for several years already. And now we are not talking about artificial intelligence or robotic mechanisms. A group of American researchers from Princeton University was able to obtain a synthetic substance, thanks to which the possibility of creating artificial life ceased to be a fantasy.
American scientists "from scratch" have developed an enzyme of microorganisms, which is responsible for the biosynthesis of organic substances. In other words, they have recreated one of the main components that make bacteria able to survive. For several years, experts from Princeton have been working on an artificial E. coli protein. To begin with, they deleted several genes from this bacterium so that it could not produce the Fes enzyme used to synthesize iron. Without this iron, obtained by the action of the enzyme, the bacillus dies. Then the experts tried to recreate the "replacement" for the Fes enzyme.
In the course of their research, the scientists noticed that the artificial Syn-F4 protein they had developed was capable of performing the functions of a "cut" enzyme. Moreover, they found that the new protein, replacing the missing enzyme, stimulates not only the processes of iron conversion in the cell, but also regulates other biochemical reactions, accelerating them. That is, Syn-F4, in addition to its main function, also performed the function of controlling other biochemical processes in the cell, acting as a catalyst. As one of the authors of the work, Michael Hecht, stated in an interview with Nature Chemical Biology,
“Biology is a system of interrelated biochemical reactions. Each of them has its own enzyme and its own catalyst. After all, otherwise these reactions would proceed extremely slowly and life could not exist. An enzyme is the best catalyst in living nature, because evolution has spent billions of years trying to select it.”
Vladimir Kuznetsov