Chinese-led team achieves breakthrough in artificial cell asymmetric division

BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhua) -- An international team of scientists has secured a breakthrough in realizing asymmetric division in artificial cells, marking a major advance in synthetic life research and opening new possibilities for next-generation biomanufacturing.

The findings were published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Asymmetric division is a fundamental process in living systems that drives cellular differentiation, tissue development and functional specialization. Reproducing this behavior in artificial cells had long been considered a major challenge in synthetic life research, largely because it is difficult to generate and maintain symmetric breaking in artificial cell systems.

A research team led by the Institute of Chemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with scientists from Beijing University of Chemical Technology and University of Bristol, has developed a novel strategy to induce asymmetric division in artificial cells.

The team constructed multilamellar liquid-crystal droplets as rudimentary models of artificial cells. Upon exposure to alkaline phosphatase or metal ions, these droplets underwent spontaneous asymmetric division, splitting into a daughter droplet and a daughter liposome with distinct structural and functional properties.

This work not only provides a new platform for understanding the emergence of life-like behaviors in primitive cells, but also offers fresh insights into the bottom-up construction of artificial cell systems with complex biomimetic features.

"The realization of asymmetric division is expected to advance the development of artificial cells with life-like properties, enabling functional differentiation and the inheritance of distinct properties across generations of progeny cells," said Qiao Yan, a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry.

The research team noted that current artificial cells are still unable to undergo continuous division and stable propagation in the way natural cells do.

In the next phase, the researchers will explore strategies to equip artificial cells with multi-generational proliferation capabilities resembling those of living systems, while integrating functional modules such as gene expression and metabolic networks. This represents an important direction for future research in the field of synthetic life.