ArticleScience advances2022
Synthetic cell-based materials extract positional information from morphogen gradients.
Article in Science advances, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Advancing Stem Cell Bioprinting to Bridge Engineered and Natural Tissue Constructs.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2026Review
- Micropatterned DNA Hydrogels for Spatiotemporal Programming of Chemical Reaction Networks.ACS nano · 2026Article
- RNA-Based Communication in Heterogeneous Populations of Cell Mimics.ACS synthetic biology · 2026Article
- Continuously tunable multistability in DNA replication networks.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The effect of PEGylation on surface tethering of liposomes via DNA nanotechnology.Journal of lipid research · 2026Article
- Enzymatically reconfigurable liquid crystalline coacervate microdroplets as protocell models.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Strategies and applications of synthetic cell communication.Nature chemical biology · 2025Review
- Passive Membrane Transport Analysis of Drug Mixtures.Analytical chemistry · 2025Article
- Interfacial assembly of biomimetic MOF-based porous membranes on coacervates to build complex protocells and prototissues.Nature chemistry · 2025Article
- Light-Based Juxtacrine Signaling Between Synthetic Cells.Small science · 2025Article
- Article
- Cell-Free Gene Expression in Bioprinted Fluidic Networks.ACS synthetic biology · 2024Article
- Synthetic Cells Revisited: Artificial Cells Construction Using Polymeric Building Blocks.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2024Review
- A Role for Bottom-Up Synthetic Cells in the Internet of Bio-Nano Things?Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Cell-Free Production Systems in Droplet Microfluidics.Advances in biochemical engineering/biotechnology · 2023Review
- A four-track perspective for bottom-up synthetic cells.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Biomaterials composed of synthetic cells have the potential to adapt and differentiate guided by physicochemical environmental cues. Inspired by biological systems in development, which extract positional information (PI) from morphogen gradients in the presence of uncertainties, we here investigate how well synthetic cells can determine their position within a multicellular structure. To calculate PI, we created and analyzed a large number of synthetic cellular assemblies composed of emulsion droplets connected via lipid bilayer membranes. These droplets contained cell-free feedback gene circuits that responded to gradients of a genetic inducer acting as a morphogen. PI is found to be limited by gene expression noise and affected by the temporal evolution of the morphogen gradient and the cell-free expression system itself. The generation of PI can be rationalized by computational modeling of the system. We scale our approach using three-dimensional printing and demonstrate morphogen-based differentiation in larger tissue-like assemblies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.