The protein dynamin A in liposomes can be used as a one-component cell division machine, researchers from Delft show in Nature Nanotechnology.

If you want to make a synthetic cell, you have to find a way to make it divide. Natural cells do this all the time. Nicola De Franceschi, Cees Dekker and colleagues at the Technical University of Delft have taken a step in this direction by studying how a bacterial protein, dynamin A (DynA), helps to induce half or full scission in dumbbell-shaped liposomes from the inside.