ArticleNature communications2025
Engineering intercellular communication using M13 phagemid and CRISPR-based gene regulation for multicellular computing in Escherichia coli.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Spatially Encoded Protocell Network for Non-Cascaded Parallel Biocomputation.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Living circuit boards built by printing bacterial transistors.Nature chemical biology · 2026Article
- Engineering rhizobacterial communities for soil and plant health.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Review
- Advances in tools, strategies, and applications of mining of microbial genomes for novel antimicrobials: a comprehensive review.Folia microbiologica · 2026Review
- Light-Controlled Membrane Fusion in Synthetic Cells.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Exploring the computing power of microbes that shapes the environment.Current opinion in microbiology · 2026Review
- Phage-mediated intercellular CRISPRi for biocomputation in bacterial consortia.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Uptake and leakage rates differentially shape community arrangement and composition of microbial consortia.The ISME journal · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Engineering multicellular consortia, where information processing is distributed across specialized cell types, offers a promising strategy for implementing sophisticated biocomputing systems. However, a major challenge remains in establishing orthogonal intercellular communication, or "wires," within synthetic bacterial consortia. In this study, we address this bottleneck by integrating phagemid-mediated intercellular communication with CRISPR-based gene regulation for multicellular computing in synthetic E. coli consortia. We achieve intercellular communication with high sensitivity by regulating the transfer of single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) encoded on M13 phagemids from sender to receiver cells. Once inside the receiver cells, the transferred sgRNAs mediate gene regulation via CRISPR interference. Leveraging this approach, we successfully constructed one-, two-, and four-input logic gates. Our work expands the toolkit for intercellular communication and paves the way for complex information processing in synthetic microbial consortia, with diverse potential applications, including biocomputing, biosensing, and biomanufacturing.
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Registered trials
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