A Floating Mould Technique for the Programmed Assembly of Protocells into Protocellular Materials Capable of Non-Equilibrium Biochemical Sensing

16 December 2020, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

Despite important breakthroughs in bottom-up synthetic biology have recently been achieved, a major challenge still remains the construction of free-standing, macroscopic and robust materials from protocell building blocks that are stable in water and capable of emergent behaviours. Herein we report a new floating mould technique for the fabrication of millimetre- to centimetre-sized protocellular materials (PCMs) of any shape that overcomes most of the current challenges in prototissue engineering. Significantly, this technique also allowed us to generate 2D periodic arrays of PCMs that displayed an emergent non-equilibrium spatiotemporal sensing behaviour. These arrays were capable of collectively translating the information provided by the external environment and encoded in the form of propagating reaction-diffusion fronts into a readable dynamic signal output. Overall, our methodology opens up a route to the fabrication of macroscopicand robust tissue-like materials with emergent behaviours, providing a new paradigm of bottom-up synthetic biology and biomimetic materials science.

Keywords

Bio-Inspired Systems
protocell
prototissue
protocellular material
bottom-up synthetic biology
Bio-mimetic design
emergent property
proteinosome
Bio-Orthogonal Chemistry
enzyme cascade reaction

Supplementary materials

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Main figures Protocellular materials 30 Nov 2020
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Main text Protocellular materials 30 Nov 2020
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ESI Protocellular materials 30 Nov 2020
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