Cytoskeleton-functionalized synthetic cells with life-like mechanical features and regulated membrane dynamicity.

The cytoskeleton is a crucial determinant of mammalian cell structure and function, providing mechanical resilience, supporting the cell membrane and orchestrating essential processes such as cell division and motility. Because of its fundamental role in living cells, developing a reconstituted or artificial cytoskeleton is of major interest. Here we present an approach to construct an artificial cytoskeleton that imparts mechanical support and regulates membrane dynamics.

Competitive protein recruitment in artificial cells.

Living cells can modulate their response to environmental cues by changing their sensitivities for molecular signals. Artificial cells are promising model platforms to study intercellular communication, but populations with such differentiated behavior remain underexplored. Here, we show the affinity-regulated exchange of proteins in distinct populations of coacervate-based artificial cells via protein-protein interactions (PPI) of the hub protein 14-3-3.

Complex Coacervate Materials as Artificial Cells.

Cells have evolved to be self-sustaining compartmentalized systems that consist of many thousands of biomolecules and metabolites interacting in complex cycles and reaction networks. Numerous subtle intricacies of these self-assembled structures are still largely unknown. The importance of liquid-liquid phase separation (both membraneless and membrane bound) is, however, recognized as playing an important role in achieving biological function that is controlled in time and space.