"Bottom-up Synthetic Biology and a Foray into Phase Separation"

Date

Apr 1, 2019

Time

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker

Allen Liu

Affiliation

University of Michigan

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Other Topics

Biologie

Host

Dora Tang

Description

Cells are made up of compartments that are delimited by membranes or by protein- and/or nucleic acid-rich liquid phases. Significant amount of work has elucidated the molecular machineries that regulate dynamic membrane-based processes and there is growing appreciation of membrane-less organelles in cell biology. In parallel, there are growing interests in recent years in trying to understand how mechanical state of the cells are utilized as a regulatory input to control cellular processes. My lab is broadly interested in studying the mechanochemical responses of biological membrane. In particular, as part of our bottom-up synthetic biology effort, we are building artificial cells that can sense mechanical input and transduce a biochemical response. To this end, we are attempting to build artificial platelets that mimic the functionalities of natural platelets. I will discuss several modular platforms that we have developed that together will integrate into functional artificial cells. In the second part of my talk, I will discuss the potential for using liquid-liquid phase separation as a paradigm for spatially organizing reactions within artificial cells. I will describe some recent work on characterizing diffusion of small molecules within and outside of phase-separated coacervate droplets. Our growing capability to compartmentalize biology within membrane or membraneless compartments will enable us to build increasingly complex cell-like systems.

Last modified: Apr 2, 2019, 2:08:55 AM