The Making of an Amoeba

Serious scientific thinkers have long speculatedand, indeed, sometimes fearedthat man may eventually be able to tailor living organisms, including himself, to suit highly specific needs. Though such "genetic engineering" is still a distant goal, it seemed just a little closer last week. After a dazzling series of experiments, researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo reported that they have succeeded many times in reassembling parts of three different amoebaemicroscopic, one-celled animalsinto one fully functioning new cell.

Other scientists have "created" new cells in the past, usually by taking the nucleus of one and implanting it into another whose nucleus had been removed. But the NASA-sponsored Buffalo workwhich was controversially described by its team leader, James F. Danielli, "as the first artificial synthesis of a living cell"apparently goes somewhat beyond the earlier research.

Chemical Hostility. Danielli and his collaborators, Joan Lorch and Kwang W. Jeon, worked with the amoeba's three major components: the nucleus (central control center), the cytoplasm (gel-like body matter) and the cell membrane (outer wall). In a typical experiment, they carefully removed the nucleus of one amoeba with a microprobe and sucked out most of the cell's cytoplasm with a tiny pipette. Then they inserted into the remaining cell membrane a nucleus and cytoplasm that had been similarly removed from other cells. In more than 70% of their attempts, the transplant produced a completely viable new cellas long as the components used were taken from amoebae of the same strain. But when they tried the same reshuffling with parts from amoebae of different strains, the experiment failed in all but two of 434 tries.

The Buffalo researchers speculated that the difficulty may have been caused partly by a natural chemical hostility between the different strains. Despite this obstacle, scientists may someday produce amoebae with totally new characteristics. It may be possible, for example, to remove one component of an amoeba, alter it with drugs or radiation, and then insert it into the cell again. The artificially induced changes might then be passed on to the amoeba's offspring. Indeed, Danielli, who holds three doctorates (chemistry, physiology and biochemistry), seems certain that the work "opens up a new era of artificial life synthesis."

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