研究目的
The futuristic objective of synthetic biology is to build artificial systems such as synthetic cells, in which different functional entities can be designed and constructed entirely from the bottom-up. Progress towards this objective requires inspiring strategies to combine and arrange a multitude of functional building blocks in space and time.
研究成果
The study demonstrates how the combination of precision technologies – DNA nanotechnology and droplet-based microfluidics – provides new possibilities to construct, operate and monitor artificial dynamic nanostructures inside synthetic cells. It proves their reversible pH-triggered reconfiguration by CD spectroscopy, TEM and confocal fluorescence imaging. The work opens up promising potential for future work featuring the realization of stimulus cascades, mimicking reaction pathways in living cells.
研究不足
The technical and application constraints include the challenges in protein purification and the argument that a truly synthetic cell should contain solely man-made components. Potential areas for optimization include the integration of more complex functions and the improvement of the stability and efficiency of the DNA nanostructures.