Artificial Cytoskeleton Assembly for Synthetic Cell Motility.

Désirée Sauter, Martin Schröter, Christoph Frey, Cornelia Weber, Ulrike Mersdorf, Jan-Willi Janiesch, Ilia Platzman, Joachim P Spatz

Macromolecular bioscience 2023 Aug

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Imitation of cellular processes in cell-like compartments is a current research focus in synthetic biology. Here, a method is introduced for assembling an artificial cytoskeleton in a synthetic cell model system based on a poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAM) composite material. Toward this end, a PNIPAM-based composite material inside water-in-oil droplets that are stabilized with PNIPAM-functionalized and commercial fluorosurfactants is introduced. The temperature-mediated contraction/release behavior of the PNIPAM-based cytoskeleton is investigated. The reversibility of the PNIPAM transition is further examined in bulk and in droplets and it could be shown that hydrogel induced deformation could be used to controllably manipulate droplet-based synthetic cell motility upon temperature changes. It is envisioned that a combination of the presented artificial cytoskeleton with naturally occurring components might expand the bandwidth of the bottom-up synthetic biology. © 2022 The Authors. Macromolecular Bioscience published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.

Citation

Désirée Sauter, Martin Schröter, Christoph Frey, Cornelia Weber, Ulrike Mersdorf, Jan-Willi Janiesch, Ilia Platzman, Joachim P Spatz. Artificial Cytoskeleton Assembly for Synthetic Cell Motility. Macromolecular bioscience. 2023 Aug;23(8):e2200437