Toward long-lasting artificial cells that better mimic natural living cells

Abstract

Chemical communication is ubiquitous in biology, and so efforts in building convincing cellular mimics must consider how cells behave on a population level. Simple model systems have been built in the laboratory that show communication between different artificial cells and artificial cells with natural, living cells. Examples include artificial cells that depend on purely abiological components and artificial cells built from biological components and are driven by biological mechanisms. However, an artificial cell solely built to communicate chemically without carrying the machinery needed for self-preservation cannot remain active for long periods of time. What is needed is to begin integrating the pathways required for chemical communication with metabolic-like chemistry so that robust artificial systems can be built that better inform biology and aid in the generation of new technologies.

Keywords: artificial cell; biotechnology; synthetic biology; synthetic cells.

Figure 1.. A long-lasting artificial cell that chemically communicates.

A schematic representation of an artificial cell capable of communicating with a natural living cell (bacterium, tilted brown oblong shape). The artificial cell (shown here with a phospholipid membrane) generates a proton gradient by exploiting UV light or by the oxidation of a feedstock molecule (black circle). The energy stored in the proton gradient is then used to drive a series of interconnected anabolic reactions through, in part, the synthesis of ATP (yellow star). Here, ATP is synthesized by ATP synthase (red). ATP is consumed during RNA (light green circles) and protein synthesis (light yellow circles). The machinery for chemical communication and protein synthesis are encoded within the DNA (green circles).