Membrane-coated 3D architectures for bottom-up synthetic biology

One of the great challenges of bottom-up synthetic biology is to recreate the cellular geometry and surface functionality required for biological reactions. Of particular interest are lipid membrane interfaces where many protein functions take place. However, cellular 3D geometries are often complex...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Soft matter 2021-06, Vol.17 (22), p.5456-5466
Main Authors: Eto, Hiromune, Franquelim, Henri G, Heymann, Michael, Schwille, Petra
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological membranes
Biology
Combinatorial analysis
Cytology
Direct laser writing
Interfaces
Lipid bilayers
Lipid membranes
Lipids
Membrane proteins
Membranes
Microenvironments
Organelles
Polymers
Proteins
Synthetic biology
Three dimensional printing
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Summary:One of the great challenges of bottom-up synthetic biology is to recreate the cellular geometry and surface functionality required for biological reactions. Of particular interest are lipid membrane interfaces where many protein functions take place. However, cellular 3D geometries are often complex, and custom-shaping stable lipid membranes on relevant spatial scales in the micrometer range has been hard to accomplish reproducibly. Here, we use two-photon direct laser writing to 3D print microenvironments with length scales relevant to cellular processes and reactions. We formed lipid bilayers on the surfaces of these printed structures, and we evaluated multiple combinatorial scenarios, where physiologically relevant membrane compositions were generated on several different polymer surfaces. Functional dynamic protein systems were reconstituted in vitro and their self-organization was observed in response to the 3D geometry. This method proves very useful to template biological membranes with an additional spatial dimension, and thus allows a better understanding of protein function in relation to the complex morphology of cells and organelles. This paper outlines a robust method to template biological membranes in 3D geometries using micron-scale 3D printing. Dynamic protein systems were reconstituted in vitro and their self-organization was observed in response to the 3D geometry.
ISSN:1744-683X
1744-6848
DOI:10.1039/d1sm00112d