California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
Materials Research Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
Nat Chem. 2017 Jun;9(6):537-545. doi: 10.1038/nchem.2713. Epub 2017 Jan 30.
The capability to graft synthetic polymers onto the surfaces of live cells offers the potential to manipulate and control their phenotype and underlying cellular processes. Conventional grafting-to strategies for conjugating preformed polymers to cell surfaces are limited by low polymer grafting efficiency. Here we report an alternative grafting-from strategy for directly engineering the surfaces of live yeast and mammalian cells through cell surface-initiated controlled radical polymerization. By developing cytocompatible PET-RAFT (photoinduced electron transfer-reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer polymerization), synthetic polymers with narrow polydispersity (M/M < 1.3) could be obtained at room temperature in 5 minutes. This polymerization strategy enables chain growth to be initiated directly from chain-transfer agents anchored on the surface of live cells using either covalent attachment or non-covalent insertion, while maintaining high cell viability. Compared with conventional grafting-to approaches, these methods significantly improve the efficiency of grafting polymer chains and enable the active manipulation of cellular phenotypes.
将合成聚合物接枝到活细胞表面的能力为操纵和控制其表型和潜在细胞过程提供了可能。将预形成的聚合物接枝到细胞表面的传统接枝策略受到聚合物接枝效率低的限制。在这里，我们报告了一种通过细胞表面引发可控自由基聚合来直接工程化活酵母和哺乳动物细胞表面的替代接枝策略。通过开发细胞相容性的 PET-RAFT（光诱导电子转移-可逆加成-断裂链转移聚合），可以在室温下在 5 分钟内获得具有较窄多分散性（M/M<1.3）的合成聚合物。该聚合策略能够使用共价附着或非共价插入，直接从连接到活细胞表面的链转移剂上引发链增长，同时保持高细胞活力。与传统的接枝方法相比，这些方法显著提高了接枝聚合物链的效率，并能够主动操纵细胞表型。
