Designing Synthetic Cells
Remember Jacques Loeb? Before 1900, he was studying biological processes in order to control life. He sought to engineer life to make it behave how he wanted. Today, researchers in engineering and biology lead the way in the quest to synthesize cells to do what we want.
Loeb said in 1902 in McClure's magazine: "I wanted to take life in my hands and play with it, I wanted to handle it in my laboratory as I would any other chemical reaction - to start it, stop it, vary it, study it under every condition, to direct it at my will!'
Since 1902, researchers have developed many new tools and methods to synthesize cells. But just as there is no single right way to visualize a cell, there is no single right synthetic cell. Researchers design their cells based on the questions they want to ask and answer.
They are asking questions like:
At the Center for Cellular Construction, researchers start with a cell blueprint based on a list of desired features of drawings. Then, they use models or data to predict what kinds of genetic molecular changes are needed to achieve that blueprint in a final synthesized cell.
The Cyborg Cell group attempts to introduce materials that can be externally controlled, such as magnets, into cells to direct cellular structures and achieve new functions.
Researchers from many different disciplines make up these groups. Cell biologists, computational modelers, engineers, physicists, sociologists, historians, and more are designing synthetic cells together to investigate basic rules of life. The diversity of perspectives and methods enables them to explore many possibilities.
The membranes of cells and their organelles are primarily made of lipids. The ProteoCell Team uses alternative biological materials, like proteins and peptides, to build synthetic compartments.
The SynCell Learning group aims to “program” a synthetic cell to perform associative learning tasks, like Pavlovian conditioning: in this case, learning to “salivate” (produce GFP) in response to a “bell” (blue light) after repeated pairing of the “bell” with a chemical input.
- Loeb, Jacques. Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fertilization. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1913. Page 74, Figures 21 and 22.
- Center for Cellular Construction, Conceptual Diagram of the Center’s Work Philosophy, Digital media, 2021.
- Cyborg Cell group (Elting, M., Bhamla, S., Chang, F., Dinner, A., and Maienschein, J.), Schematic of Different Ways Magnetic Beads Can Move in Cells, Digital media, 2021.
- Guerrero, Anna Clemencia, The Cyborg Cell Group, Digital media, 2021.
- ProteoCell Team (Noireaux, V., Sullivan, M., Ghirlanda, G., Keating, C., Harthorn, B. H., Kerfeld, C. A.), Conceptual Diagram of Team Goals, Digital media, 2021. https://www.theproteocellproject.org/.
- SynCell group (Carothers, J., Chen, I., Frow, E., Lakin, M. & Peralta-Yayha, P.) Conceptual Diagram of Group Goals, Digital media, 2021. (Appears in 2019 NSF award 1935087: Synthetic cells that can learn without evolution.)