• Question: will we ever be able to alter cells e.g. create a cell wall

    Asked by emmaleung to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Robert Woolfson

      Robert Woolfson answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      We alter cells all the time. Biologists introduce drugs and chemicals to break or fix parts of the cell. One of the biggest areas of medicine at the moment is how to introduce things into certain parts of the cell to affect the function.

      See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224134327.htm for an example

    • Photo: Matthew Pankhurst

      Matthew Pankhurst answered on 22 Jun 2013:

      Yes, we do already! And we can create cell walls. Cell walls are amazing things when you look at them closely – they are very good at filtering out what’s not good and letting good things come into the cell. This is really complex, but we can make these things, although life is heaps better at it than us – it’s had 4.5 billions years of practice 🙂 There is a difference between cell walls and cell membranes, and they do slightly different things, but they both limit what is inside a cell and what isn’t – which is very important.
      check out
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_wall

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