Building First Single Cell From Scratch

Not that they're trying to construct an entirely artificial life-form. Most modern cellular research looks at existing cells - which might sound obvious enough, until you realize just how amazingly complex a single cell is. Current techniques examining microcellular structures or identifying gene functions are like trying to understand a space shuttle by hacking pieces off it and seeing what happens. Professor Keating and her team are coming at the problem from the opposite extreme - instead of isolating parts of the vast ticking clockwork and trying to reverse-engineer them, they're building their own cell from scratch.