One key capacity of cells (synthetic and evolved) is the ability to sense and respond to the environment at the scale of individual molecules. Evolved biology has discovered how to sense a vast array of stimuli and respond with intricacy and precision, but we as engineers still struggle to adapt those sensors and responses for human-specified uses in synthetic contexts, in large part due to the complexity of these evolved systems.
Synthetic cells offer a simple, well defined context for developing these sensors and responses into modular, composable systems. In so doing, we can greatly expand what is possible to design and deploy with biology. We can enable detection of specific targets across a panoply of molecular types: small organics, RNAs, DNAs, proteins, sugars, and fats. We can design signal processing and computation in response to detection of target molecules. We can emit and amplify signals in response to that computation. We can further design cells to communicate with each other, sensing different aspects of their environment and sharing their findings. Applications span everything from detecting and responding to environmental contaminants or pathogens, to engineered cell-cell communication and computation.
To this end, we are building three classes of synthetic cells:
- Detector cells compatible with generic sensor modules, enabling detection of arbitrary molecules.
- Emitter cells with enzymatic pathway modules producing extracellular signals.
- Responder cells with combined detection and emission modules to enable cell-cell communication.
In v0.1.1 we’ve released validated small molecule sensitive detector modules (lactose and tetracycline responsive expression modules).
In v0.2.x, we will combine these detector modules in an AND gate. We will also implement a simple emitter module: an enzymatic pathway that can produce and emit small molecules into its environment.
In v0.3.x, we will integrate detector and emitter modules.
In addition to the prototypical modules described above, we are actively seeking a range of detector and emitter modules to test and integrate. Please reach out if you’d like to contribute your own modules or if you’d like to build your own detector and responder cells! Email us at build@bnext.bio.