TY - JOUR
T1 - Tailoring the appearance: what will synthetic cells look like?
AU - Spoelstra, W.K.
AU - Deshpande, Siddharth
AU - Dekker, Cees
N1 - Accepted Author Manuscript
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:55d28660-a0ea-44e2-8fde-dbccbefbb03c
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85034856716&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.copbio.2017.11.005
DO - 10.1016/j.copbio.2017.11.005
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85034856716
SN - 0958-1669
VL - 51
SP - 47
EP - 56
JO - Current Opinion in Biotechnology
JF - Current Opinion in Biotechnology
ER -