(533e) Engineering Vesicles Made from Recombinant Proteins Towards Synthetic Cells

The creation of a synthetic cell via self-assembly has been highlighted to help understand how complex biological cells come about from non-living molecules. Also, engineering synthetic vesicle platforms can provide a systematic tool to realize sophisticated cellular functions in synthetic materials. Although amphiphilic lipids and block copolymers have widely been used to construct vesicles - the essential cell structure, recombinant proteins have recently gathered great attention to developing more complex biological functions in synthetic cell platforms. We make globular protein vesicles (GPVs) by tuning the self-assembly of recombinant proteins including functionally folded globular domains. The GPV offers significant advantages not yet realized in existing protocell platforms, such as versatile integration of functional proteins with precise control of the vesicle physical properties. In this talk, I will discuss the engineering strategies to control their structural stability upon external stimuli triggers, membrane structure, and permeability of GPVs, which are critical for integrating biological functions into synthetic vesicles. Our ongoing work and future plans for making GPVs towards synthetic cells, including de novo protein synthesis, enzymatic cascade reactions, and sensing of biochemicals will also be discussed.