Intercellular communication between artificial cells by allosteric amplification of a molecular signal

Abstract

Multicellular organisms rely on intercellular communication to coordinate the behaviour of individual cells, which enables their differentiation and hierarchical organization. Various cell mimics have been developed to establish fundamental engineering principles for the construction of artificial cells displaying cell-like organization, behaviour and complexity. However, collective phenomena, although of great importance for a better understanding of lifelike behaviour, are underexplored. Here, we construct collectives of giant vesicles that can communicate with each other through diffusing chemical signals that are recognized and processed by synthetic enzymatic cascades. Similar to biological cells, the Receiver vesicles can transduce a weak signal originating from Sender vesicles into a strong response by virtue of a signal amplification step, which facilitates the propagation of signals over long distances within the artificial cell consortia. This design advances the development of interconnected artificial cells that can exchange metabolic and positional information to coordinate their higher-order organization.

Interphotoreceptor Retinoid-Binding Protein (IRBP) in Retinal Health and Disease

“…Chemical communication mediated by molecular signaling coordinates cell behavior (Buddingh et al, 2020). Many natural or synthetic chemical compounds which regulate different metabolic or signaling pathways have great therapeutic potential.…”

A DNA nanopillar as a scaffold to regulate the ratio and distance of mimic enzymes for an efficient cascade catalytic platform

“…Enzyme cascade, which embraces multiple enzymatic reactions in one pot without isolation of intermediates has a wide range of potential applications in bioanalysis, 1-7 biosensors 8,9 and biodiagnostics. [10][11][12][13][14][15] Indeed, the co-immobilization of cascade enzymes on a platform is one of the most straightforward protocols to mimic sequential enzyme reactions. [16][17][18][19] However, random enzyme distribution in traditional approaches brought many challenges such as the overlap of enzyme active sites, mismatch of the optimal enzyme ratio and inappropriate interenzyme distances, thereby leading to an inferior mass transport of reactants and intermediates among enzymes with signicantly reduced catalytic efficiency.…”

Interface Engineering in Multiphase Systems toward Synthetic Cells and Organelles: From Soft Matter Fundamentals to Biomedical Applications

“…The AMP together with glycogen phosphorylase b (GPb), phosphoglucomutase (PGM), and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) that are already contained in receive vesicle, reconstitutes a metabolic pathway and ultimately produces NADH. [373] The receptive vesicle can be activated by various levels of AMP, transducing a weak chemical signal into an enhanced NADH response, which facilitates long-distanced signaling. [373] www.advmat.de www.advancedsciencenews.com…”

“…[373] The receptive vesicle can be activated by various levels of AMP, transducing a weak chemical signal into an enhanced NADH response, which facilitates long-distanced signaling. [373] www.advmat.de www.advancedsciencenews.com…”

“…c) Adapted under the terms of the CC‐BY Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). [ 373 ] Copyright 2020, The Authors, published by Springer Nature.…”