The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) take intrigue with the Freeman Lab’s ‘new method of building artificial cells from the ground up.’

These artificial cells have the ability to respond to external triggers such as heat, making them potential building blocks for sensors or cellular reactors. The method of building these cells uses nature’s design principles but incorporates cellular materials in ways not seen in nature, claims study researcher Ronit Freeman, a biomaterials researcher at the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“This freedom really gives you the ability to make synthetic biology that is not necessarily only recapitulating what nature does, but that is free of the restrictions biology might have,” Freeman says.

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