With the long-term goal of creating living cells from non-living components, scientists in the field of synthetic biology work with RNA origami. This tool uses the multifunctionality of the natural RNA biomolecule to fold new building blocks, making protein synthesis superfluous. In pursuit of the artificial cell, a research team has cleared a crucial hurdle. Using the RNA origami technique, they succeeded in producing nanotubes that fold into cytoskeleton-like structures.
