An international team of biologists is trying to reconstruct a living thing inside a computer, down to every last molecule, based on Escherichia coli.

A full-blown model of E. coli would be able to swim, eat food, fight off invading viruses, make copies of its DNA, and do many other tasks all at the same time.

Scientists could potentiallly adapt such an E. coli model to more complex human cells to simulate how they react to different drugs.