Scientists now believe it may be possible to create the first artificial unit of life in the next 5 to 10 years and that for the first time, they have just about all the pieces they need to begin making inanimate chemicals come alive.

More than 100 laboratories study processes involved in the creation of life. Spearheading the drive: the European Union’s Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution project, scheduled this month to open the first institution devoted exclusively to creating artificial life, called the European Center for Living Technology.

Life must have three elements: a container, such as the membrane wall of a cell; metabolism, the ability to convert basic nutrients into a cell’s working parts; and genes, chemical instructions for building a cell that can be passed on to progeny and change as conditions change.

Each of these critical elements has now been achieved in the laboratory in rudimentary form, and scientists say they are ready to try to put them all together in one working unit.

Physicist Norman Packard, who established the first company, ProtoLife, to capitalize on the new field of living technology, thinks of artificial cells as tiny machines that can be programmed to clean out arteries, deliver drugs to specific sites in the body, and perform other jobs with great precision.