Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London, UK.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2021 Mar 8;60(11):5602-5611. doi: 10.1002/anie.202006941. Epub 2020 Oct 13.
The construction of artificial cells from inanimate molecular building blocks is one of the grand challenges of our time. In addition to being used as simplified cell models to decipher the rules of life, artificial cells have the potential to be designed as micromachines deployed in a host of clinical and industrial applications. The attractions of engineering artificial cells from scratch, as opposed to re-engineering living biological cells, are varied. However, it is clear that artificial cells cannot currently match the power and behavioural sophistication of their biological counterparts. Given this, many in the synthetic biology community have started to ask: is it possible to interface biological and artificial cells together to create hybrid living/synthetic systems that leverage the advantages of both? This article will discuss the motivation behind this cellular bionics approach, in which the boundaries between living and non-living matter are blurred by bridging top-down and bottom-up synthetic biology. It details the state of play of this nascent field and introduces three generalised hybridisation modes that have emerged.
从无生命的分子构建块构建人工细胞是我们这个时代的重大挑战之一。除了被用作简化的细胞模型来破解生命规则外，人工细胞还有可能被设计为微机器，应用于众多临床和工业应用中。与重新设计活的生物细胞相比，从零开始设计人工细胞具有多种吸引力。然而，很明显，人工细胞目前无法与生物细胞的功能和行为复杂性相匹配。有鉴于此，合成生物学领域的许多人开始问：是否有可能将生物细胞和人工细胞接口在一起，创建混合的活/合成系统，利用两者的优势？本文将讨论这种细胞仿生学方法的动机，其中通过桥接自上而下和自下而上的合成生物学来模糊活物质和非活物质之间的界限。它详细介绍了这一新兴领域的现状，并介绍了三种已经出现的通用混合模式。
