Creating life in the lab

A simple protocell model created in the laboratory of Jack Szostak, of Harvard's Origins of Life Initiative. It is based on a replicating vesicle for compartmentalization, and a replicating genome to encode heritable information. A complex environment provides nucleotides, lipids and sources of energy, which lead to growth and division of the protocell, including replication of the genetic material, through physical and chemical processes.

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