Hürtgen Daniel, Härtel Tobias, Murray Seán M, Sourjik Victor, Schwille Petra
Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology and LOEWE Center for Synthetic Microbiology (Synmikro), Karl-von-Frisch Straße 16, 35043, Marburg, Germany.
Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Am Klopferspitz 18, 82152, Martinsried, Germany.
Adv Biosyst. 2019 Jun;3(6):e1800315. doi: 10.1002/adbi.201800315. Epub 2019 Apr 2.
Cellular reproduction is one of the fundamental hallmarks of life. Therefore, the development of a minimal division machinery capable of proper genome condensation and organization, mid-cell positioning and segregation in space and time, and the final septation process constitute a fundamental challenge for synthetic biology. It is therefore important to be able to engineer such modules for the production of artificial minimal cells. A bottom-up assembly of molecular machines from bulk biochemicals complemented by in vivo experiments as well as computational modelling helps to approach such key cellular processes. Here, minimal functional modules involved in genome segregation and the division machinery and their spatial organization and positioning are reviewed, setting into perspective the design of a minimal cell. Furthermore, the milestones of recent in vitro reconstitution experiments in the context of cell division are discussed and their role in shedding light on fundamental cellular mechanisms that constitute spatiotemporal order is described. Lastly, current challenges in the field of bottom-up synthetic biology as well as possible future developments toward the development of minimal biomimetic systems are discussed.
细胞繁殖是生命的基本特征之一。因此，开发一种能够进行适当基因组浓缩与组织、在空间和时间上进行细胞中部定位与分离以及最终隔膜形成过程的最小分裂机制，对合成生物学构成了一项根本性挑战。因此，能够设计这样的模块来生产人工最小细胞非常重要。从大量生化物质自下而上组装分子机器，并辅以体内实验以及计算建模，有助于研究此类关键细胞过程。在此，对参与基因组分离和分裂机制的最小功能模块及其空间组织和定位进行综述，以展望最小细胞的设计。此外，还讨论了细胞分裂背景下近期体外重建实验的里程碑，并描述了它们在揭示构成时空秩序的基本细胞机制方面的作用。最后，讨论了自下而上合成生物学领域当前面临的挑战以及朝着开发最小仿生系统可能的未来发展方向。
