Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2023 Apr 24;14(1):2358. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-37788-z.
Engineered consortia are a major research focus for synthetic biologists because they can implement sophisticated behaviors inaccessible to single-strain systems. However, this functional capacity is constrained by their constituent strains' ability to engage in complex communication. DNA messaging, by enabling information-rich channel-decoupled communication, is a promising candidate architecture for implementing complex communication. But its major advantage, its messages' dynamic mutability, is still unexplored. We develop a framework for addressable and adaptable DNA messaging that leverages all three of these advantages and implement it using plasmid conjugation in E. coli. Our system can bias the transfer of messages to targeted receiver strains by 100- to 1000-fold, and their recipient lists can be dynamically updated in situ to control the flow of information through the population. This work lays the foundation for future developments that further utilize the unique advantages of DNA messaging to engineer previously-inaccessible levels of complexity into biological systems.
工程化生物群落是合成生物学家的主要研究重点，因为它们可以实现单菌株系统无法实现的复杂行为。然而，这种功能能力受到其组成菌株进行复杂通信的能力的限制。通过实现信息丰富的信道解耦通信，DNA 消息传递是实现复杂通信的有前途的候选架构。但它的主要优势，即其消息的动态可变性，仍未得到探索。我们开发了一种可寻址和可适应的 DNA 消息传递框架，利用了这三个优势，并在大肠杆菌中使用质粒接合来实现它。我们的系统可以将消息转移到目标接收菌株的效率提高 100 到 1000 倍，并且它们的接收列表可以在现场动态更新，以控制信息在群体中的流动。这项工作为进一步利用 DNA 消息传递的独特优势将以前无法访问的复杂程度工程化到生物系统中奠定了基础。
