Scientists built a perfectly self-replicating synthetic cell

From Live Science.com (April):

Scientists have crafted a single-celled synthetic organism that divides and multiplies just like the real thing. The advancement could someday help researchers to build miniscule computers and tiny drug-producing factories, all out of synthesized cells.

Of course, that future likely won't be realized for many years to come.

"There's just so many ways in which this coming century of biology could potentially change our daily lives for the better," said senior author Elizabeth Strychalski, leader of the Cellular Engineering Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). For example, Strychalski and her colleagues plan to engineer living sensors that can take measurements from their surrounding environments, monitoring the acidity, temperature and oxygen levels nearby.

These sensor cells could also be manufactured to produce specific products — namely medicines — and could potentially be placed inside the human body itself. "One vision is that when the cell senses a disease state, then it can make that therapeutic, and when a disease state is longer there, they could stop making that therapeutic," Strychalski said. Other cells could be cultured in the lab and used to efficiently produce food and fuel products, while still others could be made to perform computational functions at a molecular scale, she added. [read more]