Cell Surface and Membrane Engineering: Emerging Technologies and Applications

Abstract

Membranes constitute the interface between the basic unit of life—a single cell—and the outside environment and thus in many ways comprise the ultimate “functional biomaterial”. To perform the many and often conflicting functions required in this role, for example to partition intracellular contents from the outside environment while maintaining rapid intake of nutrients and efflux of waste products, biological membranes have evolved tremendous complexity and versatility. This article describes how membranes, mainly in the context of living cells, are increasingly being manipulated for practical purposes with drug discovery, biofuels, and biosensors providing specific, illustrative examples. Attention is also given to biology-inspired, but completely synthetic, membrane-based technologies that are being enabled by emerging methods such as bio-3D printers. The diverse set of applications covered in this article are intended to illustrate how these versatile technologies—as they rapidly mature—hold tremendous promise to benefit human health in numerous ways ranging from the development of new medicines to sensitive and cost-effective environmental monitoring for pathogens and pollutants to replacing hydrocarbon-based fossil fuels.

Cell surface engineering of Bacillus subtilis improves production yields of heterologously expressed α-amylases

“…B. subtilis DB104, a derivative of strain B. subtilis 168, which only expresses 4% of the extracellular protease activity in comparison to its parental strain, shows an excellent expression and secretion advantage when being used as a cell factory of industrially important extracellular enzymes [26, 27]. Cell envelope engineering has recently been shown to be beneficial to increase yields in industrial processes, such as the production of enzymes, biofuels and chemicals, and this powerful approach is perfectly suitable for novel protein engineering and directed evolution strategies combined high-throughput screening [28, 29]. Inspired by this, cell envelope engineering is employed in this research to alter the properties of cell surface components with the goal of enhancing heterologous protein production in B. subtilis DB104.…”

HCV Detection, Discrimination, and Genotyping Technologies

“…Once the pathogenic cells in samples bind to the antibodies on the biological membrane, calcium flux across the membrane changes due to alteration in membrane structure. The change in calcium flux across the membrane causes change in membrane potential that is detected with high sensitivity [ 80 ].…”

“… Working principle of Bioelectric Recognition Assay (BERA), a functional principle of an amperometric biosensor. (Reproduced with permission from [ 80 ]). …”

Performing DNA nanotechnology operations on a zebrafish

“…Synthetic biology and cell surface engineering techniques in vitro and in vivo have resulted in novel tools for the development of membrane biology, 1 offering promising membrane-based devices that may enable new types of artificial tissues, 2 , 3 biosensors, 4 , 5 drug delivery approaches, 6 , 7 3D bio-printing and the study of lipid metabolism. 8 To boost the development of these technologies, there is a growing need to enhance surface engineering techniques of membranes under in vitro and in vivo conditions with particular emphasis on exploiting artificial surface receptors 9 and designing novel biomaterials guided by natural processes, 10 such as self-assembling peptides, proteins and DNA oligonucleotides.…”