Synthetic biology engineering of biofilms as nanomaterials factories

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 585-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Q. Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Bacterial Biofilms ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Self Assembling ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Functional Amyloids ◽  
Future Technologies

Bottom-up fabrication of nanoscale materials has been a significant focus in materials science for expanding our technological frontiers. This assembly concept, however, is old news to biology — all living organisms fabricate themselves using bottom-up principles through a vast self-organizing system of incredibly complex biomolecules, a marvelous dynamic that we are still attempting to unravel. Can we use what we have gleaned from biology thus far to illuminate alternative strategies for designer nanomaterial manufacturing? In the present review article, new synthetic biology efforts toward using bacterial biofilms as platforms for the synthesis and secretion of programmable nanomaterials are described. Particular focus is given to self-assembling functional amyloids found in bacterial biofilms as re-engineerable modular nanomolecular components. Potential applications and existing challenges for this technology are also explored. This novel approach for repurposing biofilm systems will enable future technologies for using engineered living systems to grow artificial nanomaterials.

Living Technology: Exploiting Life's Principles in Technology

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Bedau ◽  
John S. McCaskill ◽  
Norman H. Packard ◽  
Steen Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Artificial Life ◽  
Evolvable Hardware ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Chemical Systems ◽  
The Social ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Electronic Chemical ◽  
Core Features

The concept of living technology—that is, technology that is based on the powerful core features of life—is explained and illustrated with examples from artificial life software, reconfigurable and evolvable hardware, autonomously self-reproducing robots, chemical protocells, and hybrid electronic-chemical systems. We define primary (secondary) living technology according as key material components and core systems are not (are) derived from living organisms. Primary living technology is currently emerging, distinctive, and potentially powerful, motivating this review. We trace living technology's connections with artificial life (soft, hard, and wet), synthetic biology (top-down and bottom-up), and the convergence of nano-, bio-, information, and cognitive (NBIC) technologies. We end with a brief look at the social and ethical questions generated by the prospect of living technology.

Bottom-Up Synthesis of Artificial Cells: Recent Highlights and Future Challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 287-308
Author(s):  
Ivan Ivanov ◽  
Sebastián López Castellanos ◽  
Severo Balasbas ◽  
Lado Otrin ◽  
Nika Marušič ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Basic Unit ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Cellular Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Tremendous Progress ◽  
Timely Review ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Fundamental Research ◽  
Living Organisms

The bottom-up approach in synthetic biology aims to create molecular ensembles that reproduce the organization and functions of living organisms and strives to integrate them in a modular and hierarchical fashion toward the basic unit of life—the cell—and beyond. This young field stands on the shoulders of fundamental research in molecular biology and biochemistry, next to synthetic chemistry, and, augmented by an engineering framework, has seen tremendous progress in recent years thanks to multiple technological and scientific advancements. In this timely review of the research over the past decade, we focus on three essential features of living cells: the ability to self-reproduce via recursive cycles of growth and division, the harnessing of energy to drive cellular processes, and the assembly of metabolic pathways. In addition, we cover the increasing efforts to establish multicellular systems via different communication strategies and critically evaluate the potential applications.

Biomaterials for Regenerative Medicine

MRS Bulletin ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (7) ◽  
pp. 546-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel I. Stupp
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Cell Biology ◽  
Spinal Cord Injuries ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Research Society ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Self Assembling ◽  
Genomics And Proteomics ◽  
Materials Research ◽  
Future Technologies

AbstractThe following article is based on a presentation given by Samuel I. Stupp of Northwestern University as part of Symposium X—Frontiers of Materials Research on April 13, 2004, at the Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in San Francisco. Materials designed at the molecular and supramolecular scales to interact with cells, biomolecules, and pharmaceuticals will have a profound impact on technologies targeting the regeneration of body parts. Materials science is a great partner to stem cell biology, genomics, and proteomics in crafting the scaffolds that will effectively regenerate tissues lost to trauma, disease, or genetic defects. The repair of humans should be minimally invasive, and thus the best scaffolds would be liquids programmed to create materials inside our bodies. In this regard, self-assembling materials will play a key role in future technologies. This article illustrates how molecules are designed to assemble into cell scaffolds for human repair and provides examples relevant to brain damage, fractures of the skeleton, spinal cord injuries leading to paralysis, and diabetes.

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

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agostino Galanti ◽  
Rafael Moreno Tortolero ◽  
Raihan Azad ◽  
Stephen Cross ◽  
Sean Davis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Reaction Diffusion ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Periodic Arrays ◽  
Emergent Behaviours ◽  
Non Equilibrium

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.

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

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agostino Galanti ◽  
Rafael Moreno Tortolero ◽  
Raihan Azad ◽  
Stephen Cross ◽  
Sean Davis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Reaction Diffusion ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Periodic Arrays ◽  
Emergent Behaviours ◽  
Non Equilibrium

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.

scholarly journals A New Multi-Person Pose Estimation Method Using the Partitioned CenterPose Network

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 4241
Author(s):  
Jiahua Wu ◽  
Hyo Jong Lee
Keyword(s):  
Pose Estimation ◽  
Human Body ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Estimation Method ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Center Point ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Body Joints

In bottom-up multi-person pose estimation, grouping joint candidates into the appropriately structured corresponding instance of a person is challenging. In this paper, a new bottom-up method, the Partitioned CenterPose (PCP) Network, is proposed to better cluster the detected joints. To achieve this goal, we propose a novel approach called Partition Pose Representation (PPR) which integrates the instance of a person and its body joints based on joint offset. PPR leverages information about the center of the human body and the offsets between that center point and the positions of the body’s joints to encode human poses accurately. To enhance the relationships between body joints, we divide the human body into five parts, and then, we generate a sub-PPR for each part. Based on this PPR, the PCP Network can detect people and their body joints simultaneously, then group all body joints according to joint offset. Moreover, an improved l1 loss is designed to more accurately measure joint offset. Using the COCO keypoints and CrowdPose datasets for testing, it was found that the performance of the proposed method is on par with that of existing state-of-the-art bottom-up methods in terms of accuracy and speed.

Polymerization-Induced Proteinosome Formation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanying Zhao ◽  
Fang Liu ◽  
Yaqian Cai ◽  
Huan Wang ◽  
Xinlin Yang
Keyword(s):  
Materials Science ◽  
Potential Applications

In these years, the fabrication of well-organized proteinosomes has been a popular topic due to the potential applications of the structures in materials science and nanotechnology. A challenge in the...

scholarly journals The Hidden Charm of Life

Life ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Porcar
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Bacterial Cells ◽  
Living Organisms

Synthetic biology is an engineering view on biotechnology, which has revolutionized genetic engineering. The field has seen a constant development of metaphors that tend to highlight the similarities of cells with machines. I argue here that living organisms, particularly bacterial cells, are not machine-like, engineerable entities, but, instead, factory-like complex systems shaped by evolution. A change of the comparative paradigm in synthetic biology from machines to factories, from hardware to software, and from informatics to economy is discussed.

scholarly journals Multiscale additive manufacturing of polymers using 3D photo-printable self-assembling ionic liquid monomers

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bineh G. Ndefru ◽  
Bryan S. Ringstrand ◽  
Sokhna I.-Y. Diouf ◽  
Sönke Seifert ◽  
Juan H. Leal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ionic Liquid ◽  
Additive Manufacturing ◽  
Self Assembly ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Low Resolution ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Cost Approach ◽  
Self Assembling ◽  
Nanoscale Features

Combining bottom-up self-assembly with top-down 3D photoprinting affords a low cost approach for the introduction of nanoscale features into a build with low resolution features.

Evolving protocells to prototissues: rational design of a missing link

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 1159-1165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiksha Mantri ◽  
K. Tanuj Sapra
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Hierarchical Assembly ◽  
Artificial Cell

Realization of a functional artificial cell, the so-called protocell, is a major challenge posed by synthetic biology. A subsequent goal is to use the protocellular units for the bottom-up assembly of prototissues. There is, however, a looming chasm in our knowledge between protocells and prototissues. In the present paper, we give a brief overview of the work on protocells to date, followed by a discussion on the rational design of key structural elements specific to linking two protocellular bilayers. We propose that designing synthetic parts capable of simultaneous insertion into two bilayers may be crucial in the hierarchical assembly of protocells into a functional prototissue.

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