In Technology Review: Cell on a Chip, Lauren Gravitz reports that researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, have created the first artificial cellular organelle. This “cell on a chip” will help researchers understand how our bodies produce the widely-used blood thinner heparin.

This is a critical step. After its discovery nearly a century ago, heparin remains almost impossible to create in a laboratory, and so is still made from pig intestines – a procedure susceptible to sometimes lethal contamination.

Fake cell: This microfluidics chip can replicate the activity of one of the eukaryotic cell’s most important, yet least understood, organelles–the Golgi apparatus. Researchers hope that it can help them understand how to create synthetic versions of important drugs such as heparin. Credit: Courtesy JACS

The central mystery is the process by which a cellular organelle called the Golgi apparatus, converts proteins to sugar-studded glycoproteins. To emulate the Golgi’s workings, researchers created their very own artificial cell organelle – a small microfluidics chip – that acts as a precise, controllable, (eventually) automated Golgi analogue.

Funding and serendipity aligned, bioengineered heparin may enter clinical trials within five years.

First used in its current sense  by mathematician and scifi writer Vernor Vinge in 1993, and introduced to popular culture by technology futurist Ray Kurzweil 1n 2005, the Singularity is the theoretical future point of hyper-accelerating societal, scientific and economic change made possible by the emergence of machine superintelligence.

The premier dialog on the Singularity, the first Singularity Summit was held at Stanford in 2006 to further understanding and discussion about the Singularity concept and the future of human technological progress. It was founded as a venue for leading thinkers to explore the subject, whether scientist, enthusiast, or skeptic.