But if the yeast's Golgi has different ideas from a human's about how to package that protein, the result may not work well as a drug.

ECONOMIST: An attempt to mimic part of a cell on a chip

The Golgi apparatus (named after Camillo Golgi, who discovered it in 1898, and illustrated in the accompanying picture) is the part of a cell that sweetens them up.

ECONOMIST: An attempt to mimic part of a cell on a chip

Though the artificial Golgi Dr Linhardt and his team have designed is much bigger than a cell, it is still small by the standards of human engineering, being built on what is known as a digital-fluidics chip.

ECONOMIST: An attempt to mimic part of a cell on a chip

So understanding the process (glycosylation, to give its proper name) is an important task, and Robert Linhardt, of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and his colleagues, hope to contribute by building an artificial Golgi apparatus.

ECONOMIST: An attempt to mimic part of a cell on a chip