Tailoring the appearance: what will synthetic cells look like?

Tailoring the appearance: what will synthetic cells look like?

Spoelstra, W.K. (TU Delft BN/Cees Dekker Lab; Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft)
Deshpande, S.R. (TU Delft BN/Cees Dekker Lab; Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft)
Dekker, C. (TU Delft BN/Cees Dekker Lab; Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft)

2018

Recently, the bottom-up assembly of a synthetic cell has emerged as a daring novel approach that can be expected to have major impact in generating fundamental insight in the organization and function of actual biological cells, as well as in stimulating a broad range of applications from drug delivery systems to chemical nanofactories. A crucial feature of any such synthetic cell is the architectural scaffold that defines its identity, compartmentalizes its inner content, and serves as a protective and selective barrier against its environment. Here we review a variety of potential scaffolds for building a synthetic cell. We categorize them as membranous structures (liposomes, fatty acid vesicles, polymersomes), emulsions (droplets and colloidosomes), and membrane-less coacervates. We discuss recent advances for each of them, and explore their salient features as candidates for designing synthetic cells.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:55d28660-a0ea-44e2-8fde-dbccbefbb03c

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2017.11.005

2018-11-26

0958-1669

Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 51, 47-56

Accepted Author Manuscript

Institutional Repository

review

© 2018 W.K. Spoelstra, S.R. Deshpande, C. Dekker