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No one has successfully defined life but the properties we often associate with living things are motility, metabolism and self-replication. According to the Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman: "What I can't create, I don't understand". We thought we'd give it a shot – understanding life – and in the process we've made two different systems, one that exhibits both autonomous motility and metabolism and another which is the first artificial system which can replicate arbitrarily designed motifs.
The first system, artificial swimmers, provides insight into many natural phenomena such as a flocking of birds and schooling of fish.
The second system uses diurnal cycles of temperature and light and at present is doubling each cycle, growing exponentially. It provides a new way of producing many, many copies of nanoscale devices and may give insights into the origin of conventional life on earth.
Prof. Dr. Paul Chaikin (New York University, Department of Physics)