Outside-the-Cell Thinking Simplifies Assembly of Pure Protein Synthesis Machinery

Never mind outside-the-box thinking. Outside-the-cell thinking promises to solve a difficult problem—how to reconstitute cellular reactions outside of biological systems, and to do so in a practical, cost-efficient way. At present, it is difficult to assemble synthetic cell-free systems that can emulate the multistep processes that occur naturally within cells.These cell-free systems typically require multiple proteins, which may be extracted from whole cells and used directly for in vitro