2- and 3-dimensional synthetic large-scale de novo patterning by mammalian cells through phase separation (original) (raw)

Cachat, Elise, Liu, Weijia, Martin, Kim C., Yuan, Xiaofei ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5395-9109, Yin, Huabing ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7693-377X, Hohenstein, Peter and Davies, Jamie A.(2016) 2- and 3-dimensional synthetic large-scale de novo patterning by mammalian cells through phase separation.Scientific Reports, 6, 20664. (doi: 10.1038/srep20664) (PMID:26857385) (PMCID:PMC4746622)

Abstract

Synthetic biology provides an opportunity for the construction and exploration of alternative solutions to biological problems - solutions different from those chosen by natural life. To this end, synthetic biologists have built new sensory systems, cellular memories, and alternative genetic codes. There is a growing interest in applying synthetic approaches to multicellular systems, especially in relation to multicellular self-organization. Here we describe a synthetic biological system that confers large-scale de novo patterning activity on 2-D and 3-D populations of mammalian cells. Instead of using the reaction-diffusion mechanisms common in real embryos, our system uses cadherin-mediated phase separation, inspired by the known phenomenon of cadherin-based sorting. An engineered self-organizing, large-scale patterning system requiring no prior spatial cue may be a significant step towards the construction of self-assembling synthetic tissues.

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