Now, Tinkercell computer system to design life components

A team led by an Indian-origin researcher has developed Tinkercell-a computer-aided design technology (CAD) that could allow synthetic biologists to redesign artificial life forms much faster and more easily.

Deepak Chandran and colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle developed Tinkercell to allow biologists to meddle with the components of, say, a bacterium, and simulate the effect of the change.

The package has a library of the components of life, from which users can pick different cells, membrane proteins, fluorescent proteins, enzymes and genes to create their organism, reports New Scientist.

Tinkercell can then simulate the life form to see if it functions as expected.

Details of the technological advance have been published in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering.