Tiny RNA droplets learn to move and carry cargo — a step toward living-like materials

In a Heidelberg laboratory, droplets of RNA — the cell's messenger molecule — did something nobody designed them to do. When random mutations crept in, the droplets hollowed out little storage pockets, began to drift, bump into each other and grow, behaving a little like living cells. The work, led by Kerstin Göpfrich's team and published in Nature Chemical Engineering, gives scientists a new way to build soft materials that could one day ferry medicine exactly where the body needs it.