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Using Synthetic Biology to Engineer Living Cells That Interface with Programmable Materials
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Programming microbial population dynamics by engineered cell-cell communication.

Hao Song1, Stephen Payne, Cheemeng Tan

  • 1School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. songhao@ntu.edu.sg.

Biotechnology Journal
|June 18, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Synthetic biology engineers gene circuits for novel cellular functions. This review highlights advances in cell-cell communication for reliable population dynamics in synthetic microbial ecosystems.

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Area of Science:

  • Synthetic biology
  • Microbial ecology
  • Systems biology

Background:

  • Synthetic biology aims to program cellular behavior using engineered gene circuits.
  • Intracellular gene circuits are susceptible to cell-cell variations from stochastic gene expression.
  • Cell-cell communication is crucial for coordinating cellular behavior at the population level.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review recent advances in engineering cell-cell communication for synthetic biology.
  • To explore the development of reliable population dynamics in engineered microbial systems.
  • To bridge the understanding between engineered and natural microbial communication.

Main Methods:

  • Review of engineered cell-cell communication strategies.
  • Analysis of synthetic microbial ecosystems with one-way and two-way communication.
  • Examination of single-species and multi-species communication systems.

Main Results:

  • Engineered cell-cell communication enables reliable population dynamics.
  • Systems range from single-species to multi-species and one-way to two-way communication.
  • Synthetic microbial ecosystems serve as model systems for studying communication.

Conclusions:

  • Engineered cell-cell communication is key to robust synthetic biology applications.
  • Advances facilitate understanding of natural microbial communication principles.
  • Novel biotechnology applications can be developed using engineered communication systems.