Grimes Patrick J, Galanti Agostino, Gobbo Pierangelo
School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Cantock's Close, Bristol, United Kingdom.
Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy.
Front Mol Biosci. 2021 Dec 24;8:804717. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2021.804717. eCollection 2021.
The bottom-up synthesis of cell-like entities or from inanimate molecules and materials is one of the grand challenges of our time. In the past decade, researchers in the emerging field of have developed different protocell models and engineered them to mimic one or more abilities of biological cells, such as information transcription and translation, adhesion, and enzyme-mediated metabolism. Whilst thus far efforts have focused on increasing the biochemical complexity of individual protocells, an emerging challenge in bottom-up synthetic biology is the development of networks of communicating synthetic protocells. The possibility of engineering multi-protocellular systems capable of sending and receiving chemical signals to trigger individual or collective programmed cell-like behaviours or for communicating with living cells and tissues would lead to major scientific breakthroughs with important applications in biotechnology, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. This mini-review will discuss this new, emerging area of bottom-up synthetic biology and will introduce three types of bioinspired networks of communicating synthetic protocells that have recently emerged.
从无生命的分子和材料自下而上合成类细胞实体是我们这个时代的重大挑战之一。在过去十年中，新兴领域的研究人员开发了不同的原始细胞模型，并对其进行工程设计，以模拟生物细胞的一种或多种能力，如信息转录和翻译、黏附以及酶介导的代谢。虽然迄今为止的努力主要集中在增加单个原始细胞的生化复杂性，但自下而上合成生物学中一个新出现的挑战是开发能够通信的合成原始细胞网络。设计出能够发送和接收化学信号以触发个体或集体的程序化类细胞行为，或与活细胞和组织进行通信的多原始细胞系统，这一可能性将带来重大的科学突破，并在生物技术、组织工程和再生医学中具有重要应用。本综述将讨论自下而上合成生物学这个新出现的领域，并介绍最近出现的三种受生物启发的合成原始细胞通信网络。
