Toward the engineering of minimal living cells

Luisi, Pier Luigi

doi:10.1002/ar.10155

Cited by 150 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…For many scientists in the protocell approach the main aim is to contribute to the understanding of life, particularly of its origin. In his book, "The Luisi 2002Luisi , 2006. Even the experiments on alternative genomes may provide insights into why living organisms are the way they are, by revealing the advantages of the existing genetic system over certain artificial alternatives (Benner 2004;Szathmary 2003).…”

Section: Synthetic Biologists Want To Contribute To the Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Conception of Life in Synthetic Biology

Deplazes‐Zemp

2011

Sci Eng Ethics

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The phrase 'synthetic biology' is used to describe a set of different scientific and technological disciplines, which share the objective to design and produce new life forms. This essay addresses the following questions: What conception of life stands behind this ambitious objective? In what relation does this conception of life stand to that of traditional biology and biotechnology? And, could such a conception of life raise ethical concerns? Three different observations that provide useful indications for the conception of life in synthetic biology will be discussed in detail: 1. Synthetic biologists focus on different features of living organisms in order to design new life forms, 2. Synthetic biologists want to contribute to the understanding of life, and 3. Synthetic biologists want to modify life through a rational design, which implies the notions of utilising, minimising/optimising, varying and overcoming life. These observations indicate a tight connection between science and technology, a focus on selected aspects of life, a production-oriented approach to life, and a design-oriented understanding of life. It will be argued that through this conception of life synthetic biologists present life in a different light. This conception of life will be illustrated by the metaphor of a toolbox. According to the notion of life as a toolbox, the different features of living organisms are perceived as various rationally designed instruments that can be used for the production of the living organism itself or secondary products made by the organism. According to certain ethical positions this conception of life might raise ethical concerns related to the status of the organism, the motives of the scientists and the role of technology in our society. Synthetic biologists want to modify life through a rational design, which implies the notions of utilising, minimising/optimising, varying and overcoming life.These observations indicate a tight connection between science and technology, a focus on selected aspects of life, a production-oriented approach to life, and a designoriented understanding of life. It will be argued that through this conception of life synthetic biologists present life in a different light. This conception of life will be illustrated by the metaphor of a toolbox. According to the notion of life as a toolbox, the different features of living organisms are perceived as various rationally designed instruments that can be used for the production of the living organism itself or secondary products made by the organism. According to certain ethical positions this conception of life might raise ethical concerns related to the status of the organism, the motives of the scientists and the role of technology in our society.

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Section: Synthetic Biologists Want To Contribute To the Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Conception of Life in Synthetic Biology

Deplazes‐Zemp

2011

Sci Eng Ethics

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“…These efforts are applying various approaches, depending on the organisms being used as a starting point and the specific scientific or industrial objectives motivating the effort.All the approaches can be classified as either top down or bottom up [4]. Top-down approaches involve starting with the genome of an existing (often far from minimal) organism and combining deletions to produce progressively smaller genomes [7,8,14,[49][50][51].…”

Section: Bringing the Blueprint To Life With The Creation Of A Minimamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than modifying existing organisms in small ways to fit them to our needs, entire genomes can be designed, synthesized, and implanted to produce living synthetic cells. This is far from being a new idea in biology [2][3][4], but the work of Venter and colleagues changes the consideration of this idea from a hypothetical "what if" into something that is technologically achievable in the near future if a working blueprint for the synthetic cell can be created.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building the blueprint of life

Henry

Overbeek²,

Stevens

2010

Biotechnology Journal

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With recent breakthroughs in experimental microbiology making it possible to synthesize and implant an entire genome to create a living cell, the challenge of constructing a working blueprint for the first truly minimal synthetic organism is more important than ever. Here we review the significant progress made in the design and creation of a minimal organism. We discuss how comparative genomics, gene essentiality data, naturally small genomes, and metabolic modeling are all being applied to produce a catalogue of the biological functions essential for life. We compare the minimal gene sets from three published sources with functions identified in 13 existing gene essentiality datasets. We examine how genome-scale metabolic models have been applied to design a minimal metabolism for growth in simple and complex media. Additionally, we survey the progress of efforts to construct a minimal organism, either through implementation of combinatorial deletions in Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli or through the synthesis and implantation of synthetic genomes.

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“…This is especially relevant when dealing with nano-scale systems, but becomes less needed when dealing with lipid vesicles. Some current approaches to the synthesis of artificial cells are actually based on the use of this type of-relatively large-bilayer container, which is closer to the structure of real biological membranes (Walde and Luisi, 2000;Luisi, 2002;Oberholzer and Luisi, 2002;Hanczyc and Szostak, 2003;Hanczyc and Szostak, 2004; see also Szostack et al, 2001 for a review and references therein).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Extensive experimental work has been developed using vesicles under a top-down approach (Luisi, 2002;Luisi et al 2006;and references therein). This approach involves the use of molecules already present in living cells, including nucleic acids and complex enzymes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protocell self-reproduction in a spatially extended metabolism–vesicle system

Macía

Solé

2007

Journal of Theoretical Biology

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Cellular life requires the presence of a set of biochemical mechanisms in order to maintain a predictable process of growth and division. Several attempts have been made towards the building of minimal protocells from a top-down approach, i.e. by using available biomolecules. This type of synthetic approach has so far been only partially successful, and appropriate models of the synthetic protocell cycle might be needed to guide future experiments. In this paper, we present a simple biochemically and physically feasible model of cell replication involving a discrete semi-permeable vesicle with an internal minimal metabolism involving two reactive centers. It is shown that such a system can effectively undergo a whole cell replication cycle. The model can be used as a basic framework to model whole protocell dynamics including more complex sets of reactions. The possible implementation of our design in future synthetic protocells is outlined. r

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Toward the engineering of minimal living cells

Cited by 150 publications

References 21 publications

The Conception of Life in Synthetic Biology

The Conception of Life in Synthetic Biology

Building the blueprint of life

Protocell self-reproduction in a spatially extended metabolism–vesicle system

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