{"id":219059,"date":"2025-07-30T12:13:32","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T17:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/tiny-artificial-cells-maintain-24-hour-cycles-like-living-organisms"},"modified":"2025-07-30T12:13:32","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T17:13:32","slug":"tiny-artificial-cells-maintain-24-hour-cycles-like-living-organisms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/tiny-artificial-cells-maintain-24-hour-cycles-like-living-organisms","title":{"rendered":"Tiny artificial cells maintain 24-hour cycles like living organisms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LUHPU0ZJlJA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A team of UC Merced researchers has shown that tiny artificial cells can accurately keep time, mimicking the daily rhythms found in living organisms. Their findings shed light on how biological clocks stay on schedule despite the inherent molecular noise inside cells.<\/p>\n<p>The study, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-61844-5\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, was led by bioengineering Professor Anand Bala Subramaniam and chemistry and biochemistry Professor Andy LiWang. The first author, Alexander Zhang Tu Li, earned his Ph.D. in Subramaniam\u2019s lab.<\/p>\n<p>Biological clocks\u2014also known as <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/circadian+rhythms\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">circadian rhythms <\/a>\u2014govern 24-hour cycles that regulate sleep, metabolism and other vital processes. To explore the mechanisms behind the circadian rhythms of cyanobacteria, the researchers reconstructed the clockwork in simplified, cell-like structures called vesicles. These vesicles were loaded with core clock proteins, one of which was tagged with a fluorescent marker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of UC Merced researchers has shown that tiny artificial cells can accurately keep time, mimicking the daily rhythms found in living organisms. Their findings shed light on how biological clocks stay on schedule despite the inherent molecular noise inside cells. The study, published in Nature Communications, was led by bioengineering Professor Anand Bala [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}