This research project aims to establish an unexplored frontier in protolife research that is based on novel conceptual and experimental advances in the design and construction of rudimentary forms of synthetic cell-like ensembles (protocells). Understanding how inanimate matter can be transformed into living matter is one of the major unsolved scientific problems of our time. Our overall goal is pioneer foundational steps towards minimal representations of synthetic cells as expressed through the fabrication of integrated, quasi-autonomous protocell phenotypes and communities.
We expect our work to spearhead new advances in “Protolife Technologies” focused on the ex novo synthesis of minimal life constructs, and provide novel opportunities in bioinspired micro-storage and delivery, micro-reactor technologies, cytomimetic engineering, and the development of integrated constructs for diverse procedures in synthetic biology. Ultimately, our long-term goal is to achieve autonomous synthetic systems based on the functional self-integration of active matter. This would represent a ground-breaking step towards understanding and bridging the transition from non-living to living matter, and open up a new area of science with profound fundamental and technological consequences.
The overall objectives are: (i) to advance a new area of synthetic protocell (bio)engineering that encompasses; and (ii) to explore higher-order behaviour within interacting protocell populations and communities (protocell ecosystems) as an unprecedented step towards synthetic protocell consortia and compartmentalized colloidal objects capable of novel collective and emergent properties.
The completed project has established new ways to design and construct an inventory of novel protocells that exhibit increasing levels of complexity, functionality and autonomy when compared with protocell models available worldwide at the beginning of the project. In particular, we have established scientific and technological advances in the fabrication of protocell-based micro-actuators, immunogenic protocells, light-responsive protocells, vasoactive protocells and living cell/protocell hybrids. At the level of protocell populations, we have built communities of protocells that exhibit diverse higher-order behaviours such as chemical communication, molecular signaling, DNA-based information processing and collective symbiosis.
