Synthetic Biology and Tissue Engineering: Toward Fabrication of Complex and Smart Cellular Constructs

Abstract

Tissue engineering approaches, with the goals of replacing or recovering damaged or diseased tissues, or of reconstituting tissues in vitro for disease modeling and drug development, have the potential to make significant contributions to medicine. Advances in stem cell biology, biomaterial synthesis and characterization, and microscale technologies have made engineered tissues a reality. However, the classic tools used to build tissues in the lab do not allow for complete control of cell behaviors. More recently, synthetic biology principles have developed robust and versatile approaches to program cells with artificial genetic circuits, where cell behavior and function can be manipulated. At the interface between synthetic biology and tissue engineering, there is space for a new area of investigation where material engineering and cellular engineering complement and sustain each other. In this progress report, synthetic biology principles and how they have been used to engineer cells with potential to dictate cell behavior and function in tissue constructs of the future are briefly described. It is our belief that this research area still needs further exploration to fully exploit synthetic biology to make smart and functional cellular constructs for therapeutic and in vitro applications.Received: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))Revised: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))

Engineering mammalian living materials towards clinically relevant therapeutics

“…In particular, the evermore accumulated know-how in synthetic biology tools can further expand the customization and control over cellular behaviour/responses beyond those naturally-occurring, thereby unlocking the possibility to program living materials with unprecedented functionalities [6]. As aforementioned, versatile genetic engineering toolkits unveil opportunities for designing the decisionmaking framework of cells in a pre-programmed mode, subsequently encoding living materials with numerous response modes, such as: (i) constitutive expression of exogenous genes, or (ii) bioresponsive/ remote-controlled expression of exogenous genes [43]. Moreover, synthetic networks can be integrated within living materials to dampen, amplify or completely alter the thresholds required for outputting their endogenous genes.…”

Characterization of Alginate–Gelatin–Cholesteryl Ester Liquid Crystals Bioinks for Extrusion Bioprinting of Tissue Engineering Scaffolds

“…For the purpose of the reference, cells were seeded into a fresh culture medium (control) with the same seeding conditions. Cell viability (%) was calculated as in Equation (4).…”

“…According to the organ procurement and transplantation network (OPTN), there is a wide gap between the number of organs in demand and donated organs for transplantation, and this difference keeps significantly growing year by year [1][2][3]. To meet the enormous need for tissue and organ for transplantation, tissue engineering (TE) has emerged as an alternative and promising solution to develop and fabricate bio-substitutes of tissues and organs that can be used [4,5]. The main principles of TE include the combination of cells, biomaterials, and engineering technologies that are used to engineer tissue substitutes with biological functions that simulate the functions of the natural tissue in the human body [3,6].…”

Motile Living Biobots Self-Construct from Adult Human Somatic Progenitor Seed Cells

“…Another key field impacted by this question is bioengineering and synthetic biology, more specifically synthetic morphogenesisthe development of self-constructing living structures by design with predictable and programmable properties [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] . Biobots is a related, rapidly growing field, focusing on building new kinds of living machines [27][28][29][30][31] .…”