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Nature Research, Scientific Reports, 1(6), 2016

DOI: 10.1038/srep20664

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

Journal article published in 2016 by Elise Cachat, Weijia Liu, Kim C. Martin, Xiaofei Yuan, Huabing Yin ORCID, Peter Hohenstein ORCID, Jamie A. Davies
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

AbstractSynthetic 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.