Minimal embryos and minimal cancers

European Journal of Risk Regulation , 2010

In 2010 it was announced the creation of a “chemical synthesis of a living organism”. The researchers have constructed a bacterium’s genetic software and transplanted it into a host cell. In this report we will explain how a synthetic cell was created and why it is so important. Then, we will analyse some problems that could arise from this discovery, including ethical and environmental ones, as well as those related to its patentability. Finally, we will try to frame this new technique, taking into account the current EU regulation on biotechnological organisms and we will end with some concluding remarks.

4th International Conference …, 2000

Embryonics (embryonic electronics) is a research project which attempts to draw inspiration form the world of biology to design better digital computing machines, and notably massively parallel arrays of processors. In the course of the development of our project, we have realized ...

Trends in Biotechnology, 2002

Biophysics and physicobiology, 2022

How do the living systems emerge from non-living molecular assemblies? What physical and chemical principles supported the process? To address these questions, a promising strategy is to artificially reconstruct living cells in a bottom-up way. Recently, the authors developed the "synthetic minimal cell" system showing recursive growth and division cycles, where the concepts of information molecules, metabolic pathways, and cell reproduction were artificially and concisely redesigned with the vesicle-based system. We intentionally avoided using the sophisticated molecular machinery of the biological cells and tried to redesign the cells in the simplest forms. This review focuses on the similarities and differences between the biological cells and our synthetic minimal cell concerning each concept of cells. Such comparisons between natural and artificial cells will provide insights on how the molecules should be assembled to create living systems to the wide readers in the field of synthetic biology, artificial cells, and protocells research. This review article is an extended version of the Japanese article "Growth and division of vesicles coupled with information molecules," published in SEIBUTSU-BUTSURI vol. 61, p. 378-381 (2021).

Life (Basel, Switzerland), 2014

Artificial cells are simple cell-like entities that possess certain properties of natural cells. In general, artificial cells are constructed using three parts: (1) biological membranes that serve as protective barriers, while allowing communication between the cells and the environment; (2) transcription and translation machinery that synthesize proteins based on genetic sequences; and (3) genetic modules that control the dynamics of the whole cell. Artificial cells are minimal and well-defined systems that can be more easily engineered and controlled when compared to natural cells. Artificial cells can be used as biomimetic systems to study and understand natural dynamics of cells with minimal interference from cellular complexity. However, there remain significant gaps between artificial and natural cells. How much information can we encode into artificial cells? What is the minimal number of factors that are necessary to achieve robust functioning of artificial cells? Can artifi...

With the recent dawn of synthetic biology, the old idea of man-made artificial life has gained renewed interest. In the context of a bottom-up approach, this entails the de novo construction of synthetic cells that can autonomously sustain themselves and proliferate. Reproduction of a synthetic cell involves the synthesis of its inner content, replication of its information module, and growth and division of its shell. Theoretical and experimental analysis of natural cells shows that, whereas the core synthesis machinery of the information module is highly conserved, a wide range of solutions have been realized in order to accomplish division. It is therefore to be expected that there are multiple ways to engineer division of synthetic cells. Here we survey the field and review potential routes that can be explored to accomplish the division of bottom-up designed synthetic cells. We cover a range of complexities from simple abiotic mechanisms involving splitting of lipid-membrane-encapsulated vesicles due to physical or chemical principles, to potential division mechanisms of synthetic cells that are based on prokaryotic division machineries. Keywords Synthetic cells Á Cell division Á Minimal cells Á Vesicle splitting ''Omnis cellula e cellula'', François-Vincent Raspail (1825). Traditionally, this quote is attributed to Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902), one of the founders of the cell theory that made his seminal contribution mainly during the fourth decade of 19th centenary. However, in fact Virshow adopted this epigram from Raspail (1825) and only popularized it (Wright and Poulsom 2012).

Synthetic minimal cells, here defined as liposomal bioreactors synthesizing protein, are a recent technology that models the intricate gene and protein networks of live cells, without the noise inherent to natural systems. Here we show a toolset for engineering combinatorial genetic circuits in synthetic cells, where distinct populations of synthetic cells control single-gene components, and those populations are assembled via programmable fusion to construct complex biological pathways. We utilize this technology to demonstrate that progenitor populations can mimic differentiation into new lineages in response to small molecule stimuli or as an effect of "mating" with another synthetic cell population. This provides a practical tool for metabolic engineering and natural pathway study, as well as paving the way towards the construction of live synthetic cells with complex gene pathways and the ability to form distinct lineages.

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 2007

In this short paper we argue for the relevance and value of theoretical models in the field of origins of life, but also claim that both theoreticians and experimentalists should make an effort to come together and interact more closely to obtain more fruitful and significant results. As an example, we present our own modeling approach to protocell dynamics, including some simulation results, to show that it is possible to develop computational tools that start bridging that traditional gap between theory and experiments.

A synthetic minimal cell is an artificial vesicle reproduction system in which a chemical and physico-chemical transformation network is regulated by information polymers. In this study, we synthesise such a minimal cell consisting of three units: energy production, information polymer synthesis, and vesicle membrane growth. Supplied ingredients are converted to energy currencies which trigger the synthesis of an information polymer, where the vesicle membrane plays the role of a template. The information polymer promotes membrane growth. By tuning the membrane composition and permeability to osmolytes, the growing vesicles show recursive reproduction over several generations. Our “synthetic minimal cell” greatly simplifies the scheme of contemporary living systems while keeping their essence. Therefore, the chemical pathways and the reproduction pathways are well described by kinetic equations and by applying the membrane elasticity model, respectively. This study provides new insi...

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 2007

The Never Born Proteins (NBPs) and the Minimal Cell projects are two currently developed research lines belonging to the field of synthetic biology. The first deals with the investigation of structural and functional properties of de novo proteins with random sequences, selected and isolated using phage display methods. The minimal cell is the simplest cellular construct which displays living properties, such as self-maintenance, self-reproduction and evolvability. The semi-synthetic approach to minimal cells involves the use of extant genes and proteins in order to build a supramolecular construct based on lipid vesicles. Results and outlooks on these two research lines are shortly discussed, mainly focusing on their relevance to the origin of life studies.