Speaker
Description
One of the important features of living systems is their evolvability and their ability to interact with the extracellular environment. Once such a system can be constructed, we will be able to observe the evolutionary processes in the laboratory at a molecular level. However, constructing such molecular systems is a challenge because of the difficulties in working with membrane proteins, very hydrophobic molecules that are prone to aggregate. We encapsulated a reconstituted in vitro transcription-translation system inside a cell-sized phospholipid vesicle together with the DNA encoding membrane protein of interest. In this way, a hydrophobic environment was supplied to the membrane proteins to fold and function to interact with the extravesicular environment. To implement the evolvability to the system, the copy number of DNA inside each vesicle was adjusted to become nearly one. By assessing the functions of membrane proteins with a fluorescence-activated cell sorter, the artificial cell could evolve based on the function of the membrane proteins. I will also describe our recent approaches to adding more complexity to our artificial cellular system.
