This is a molecular machine designed as a patch which would upgrade biological ribosomes. Once it attaches to a ribosome, it behaves in an almost similar ways as the synthetic ribosome Ribo-T, recently announced in Nature 524,119–124(06 August 2015) doi:10.1038/nature14862 [1]. It thus enables an orthogonal genetic system, (i.e., citing from the mentioned Nature letter “genetic systems that could be evolved for novel functions without interfering with native translation”).
The novel function is designed for is more ambitious than specialized new proteins synthesis. It is, instead, a two-ways translation device, between real chemistry and programmable artificial chemistry.
It behaves like a bootstrapper in computing. It is itself simulated in chemlambda, an artificial chemistry which was recently proposed as a means towards molecular computers [2]. The animation shows one of the first successful simulations.
With this molecular device in place, we can program living matter by using living cells themselves, instead of using, for example, complex, big 3D DNA printers like the ones developed by Craig Venter.
The only missing step, until recently, was the discovery of the basic translation of the building blocks of chemlambda into real chemistry.
I am very happy to make public a breakthrough result by Dr. Eldon Tyrell/Rosen, a genius who went out of academia some years ago and pursued a private career. It appears that he got interested early in this mix of lambda calculus, geometry and chemistry and he arrived to reproduce with real chemical ingredients two of the chemlambda graph rewrites: the beta rewrite and one of the DIST rewrites.
He tells me in a message that he is working on prototypes of replicants already.
He suggested the name “replicant” instead of a synthetic ribosome because a replicant, according to him, is a device which replicates a computer program (in chemlambda molecular form) into a form compatible with the cellular DNA machine, and conversely, it may convert certain (RNA) strands into chemlambda molecules, i.e. back into synthetic form corresponding to a computer program.
[1] Protein synthesis by ribosomes with tethered subunits, C. Orelle, E. D. Carlson, T. Szal, T. Florin, M. C. Jewett, A. S. Mankin
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v524/n7563/full/nature14862.html
[2] Molecular computers, M Buliga
http://chorasimilarity.github.io/chemlambda-gui/dynamic/molecular.html
[This post is a reply to +Yonatan Zunger post
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+YonatanZunger/posts/6a3C5Nm5fNS
where he shows that the INCEPT DATE of the Blade Runner replicant Roy Batty appears to be 8 Jan, 2016.
So here is a replicant, in the inception phase 🙂 ]
PS: The post appeared as well in the chemlambda collection, revived here:
chorasimilarity 