A fascinating paper titled Orchestrating Self-Replication in Artificial Cells through Digital Microfluidics has just been pre-published on bioRxiv by researchers from King’s College London.
Zhai, Dimitriou, Sengel and Wallace used the OpenDrop to directly control DNA replication and division, reporting success in achieving autonomous cycles of these processes, with “daughter compartments inheriting parental DNA and maintaining genetic continuity across multiple generations – a key feature of living systems that has been difficult to achieve in artificial cells”. We are happy to see the ‘Cybernetic Life Machine’ being put to use!

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.23.655734v1.abstract