Vejleder: Stefan Vogel
Forudsætninger: KE505 og KE506 skal være bestået.
Projektbeskrivelse
Introduction: Chemically engineered and functionalized nanoscale compartments are used in bottom-up synthetic biology to construct compartmentalized chemical processes. Progressively more complex designs demand for spatial and temporal control over entrapped species. Here, we address this demand by a DNA- and PNA encoded design for successive fusion of multiple liposome populations. In contrast to fusion protein-dependent eukaryotic vesicle processing, this artificial fusion cascade exploits the versatile encoding-potential of DNA or PNA hybridization and is generally applicable to small and giant unilamellar vesicles.[1-3]
Figure 1. Schematic representation of a three-stage cascade of liposome fusion encoded by three sets of complementary LiNAs (lipid modified nucleic acids). Content mixing are the consequence of the zipper-like hybridization of membrane-anchored LiNAs (left insert).
Methods: The reported liposome fusion platform is suitable for applications in the bottom-up construction and operation of nanoreactors and applicable from nanoscale (< 100 nm) to cell sized lipid particles (> 10.000 nm). In the field of synthetic biology, fusion cascades with efficient content mixing will facilitate design and construction of multi-component artificial cellular systems and protocell minimal systems. Initial research towards enzymatic and synthetic chemistry in liposomal nanoreactors is presented.
References: [1] P. M. G. Löffler, O. Ries, A. Rabe, A. H. Okholm, R. P. Thomsen, J. Kjems and S. Vogel, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2017, 56, 13228–13231. [2] Rabe A.; Löffler, P. M. G.; Vogel, S.; Chem. Comm. 2017, 53, 11921-11924 [3] Ries, O.; Löffler, P. M. G.; Rabe A.; Malavan, J. J.; Vogel, S.; Org. Biomol. Chem. 2017, 15, 8936–8945.