Elucidation of the way to reconstruct living cells through functionalization of artificial cells having components equivalent to cells

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26650044
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Biophysics
• Research Institution: Keio University
• Principal Investigator: Fujiwara Kei 慶應義塾大学, 理工学部(矢上), 助教 (20580989)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 合成生物学 / 人工細胞 / 膜タンパク質 / ゲノム / 無細胞転写翻訳 / 細胞再構成

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we aimed to establish fundamental technologies for realizing reconstruction of living cells from biomolecules. Through this study, we found the condition for emergence of a bacterial protein localization wave, which determines the cell division plane, in fully confined lipid spaces. We also developed a novel fusion method for artificial cells to introduce a large variety of membrane proteins to lipid membrane on artificial cells as well as living cells. Furthermore, we established an in vitro transcription-translation system for genomic DNA, and successfully detected mRNA transcribed from genome in artificial cells. The findings and methods developed in this study are expected to be an important platform for creating artificial cells behaving like living cells.

Free Research Field

合成生物学