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Fabrication in the living
Published in Martyn Dade-Robertson, Living Construction, 2020
If we were to accept that biological fabrication is framed as a hierarchy of scales, we need to ask at what level in the hierarchy we intervene and in what direction. These questions are sometimes framed as a distinction between top down and bottom up. Notions of top down and bottom up have a range of definitions in design, but, in synthetic biology, bottom-up design is seen in attempts to construct novel artificial life from scratch. Work on protocells, for example, looks to develop functioning cells from basic chemical components, including using self-assembling lipids to create cell membranes which act as containers for controlled chemical reactions (Stano and Mavelli, 2015). In contrast, top-down design modifies existing organisms and introduces novel metabolic pathways or signalling systems (Roberts et al., 2013).
The un-designability of the virtual
Published in Gretchen Coombs, Andrew McNamara, Gavin Sade, Undesign, 2018
Protocells synchronize to the individual foot thanks to their responsive and reconfigurable capacities. They adapt in real time to the current activity of the runner by adding extra support in high impact areas. Protocells and CLE (Cell-like Entities) are hybrids in between the living and the nonliving engineered from lifeless liquid chemicals manufactured artificially in laboratory conditions. Although they rely on the basic principles of living organisms (biomolecular reaction networks that couple genome to a function), and exhibit behaviours usually associated with living organisms (adaptation to the environment, movement, self-aggregation in colonies) they do not qualify as living, as they cannot reproduce or evolve. Protocells and CLE are the result of bottom-up, emerging processes and this differentiates them from the reengineering on living organisms in synthetic biology, which is a top-down approach. Currently focused on the design of smart biosensors to capture physical, chemical and biological environmental variations, protocell research has the potential to revolutionize not only the way materials are made, but also how they go on making the world.13
Mathematical Modeling of Drug Response
Published in Vittorio Cristini, Eugene J. Koay, Zhihui Wang, An Introduction to Physical Oncology, 2017
We here note that even if chemotherapy drugs are able to kill drug-resistant cell lines in vitro, it may be possible for unaccounted-for tissue-scale barriers to drug delivery in vivo to prevent drug-resistant cells from receiving the adequate amount of drug necessary to achieve maximum cell kill. This hypothesis led us to explore the possible mechanisms for barriers to drug delivery in vivo and how they can be overcome. This particular experiment employed protocells as an example of a potential solution to overcoming the barriers of drug delivery, as protocells possess the ability to deliver high concentrations to cancer cells for longer periods of time than free drug delivery, thus maximizing cell kill.
Design of artificial cells: artificial biochemical systems, their thermodynamics and kinetics properties
Published in Egyptian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 2022
Adamu Yunusa Ugya, Lin Pohan, Qifeng Wang, Kamel Meguellati
The interactions between biomolecules, metabolism from the mitochondrial factory, and the cell membrane give birth to cellular life. Cells need a set of information carriers and metabolic reactions to become functional in a changing environment. In the last century, discovery-driven biology as well as hypothesis-driven biology to design and control the new cellular functions and genetic circuits that trigger synthetic biology has been emerging domains [1]. The complex network of interactions that drives life includes key features such as docking, adaptive systems, embedding, exchange, tethering, programs, non-covalent interactions, covalent linkages, and out of equilibrium and equilibrium states, self-replicative systems, self-organized and self-assembled systems, etc. The exploration and application of these interactions have led to the emergence of synthetic biology [2]. The field of synthetic biology is mainly divided into two branches; first by synthetic protocell biology (SPB), where the synthetic units are assembled into chemical systems endued with inheritance, evolution, and reproduction (biological properties) [3]. The second branch deals with the extraction and assembly of biological units from living systems to obtain a modified version of existing biological systems. The last one deals with the generation and rewiring of genetic circuits using elementary building blocks [4]. One of the goals driven by these research branches is to obtain a programmable plug-in genetic device [5], either by directed evolution techniques [6] or by rational design [7]. Chang (1957) was the first to propose the concept of artificial cells [8]. The studies of primordial cells [9] co-translational insertion of membrane proteins into liposomes [10] and delivery of drugs [11] are a few examples of applications made by the use of artificial cells in biotechnology and industrial field.