Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, USA.
Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2020 Aug;63:95-102. doi: 10.1016/j.gde.2020.05.039. Epub 2020 Jul 3.
Synthetic multicellular (MC) systems have the capacity to increase our understanding of biofilms and higher organisms, and to serve as engineering platforms for developing complex products in the areas of medicine, biosynthesis and smart materials. Here we provide an interdisciplinary perspective and review on emerging approaches to engineer and model MC systems. We lay out definitions for key terms in the field and identify toolboxes of standardized parts which can be combined into various MC algorithms to achieve specific outcomes. Many essential parts and algorithms have been demonstrated in some form. As key next milestones for the field, we foresee the improvement of these parts and their adaptation to more biological systems, the demonstration of more complex algorithms, the advancement of quantitative modeling approaches and compilers to support rational MC engineering, and implementation of MC engineering for practical applications.
人工合成多细胞 (MC) 系统具有增进我们对生物膜和高等生物的理解的能力，并可作为医学、生物合成和智能材料等领域开发复杂产品的工程平台。在此，我们提供了一个跨学科的视角，并对新兴的人工合成多细胞系统的工程和建模方法进行了综述。我们为该领域的关键术语提供了定义，并确定了标准化部件的工具包，这些部件可以组合成各种 MC 算法，以实现特定的结果。许多基本的部分和算法已经以某种形式得到了证明。作为该领域的关键下一个里程碑，我们预计这些部分的改进及其对更多生物系统的适应、更复杂算法的演示、定量建模方法和编译器的进步以支持合理的 MC 工程，以及 MC 工程在实际应用中的实施。
