Abstract
Cell-cell communication is a widespread phenomenon in nature, ranging from bacterial quorum sensing and fungal pheromone communication to cellular crosstalk in multicellular eukaryotes. These communication modes offer the possibility to control the behavior of an entire community by modifying the performance of individual cells in specific ways. Synthetic biology, i.e., the implementation of artificial functions within biological systems, is a promising approach towards the engineering of sophisticated, autonomous devices based on specifically functionalized cells. With the growing complexity of the functions performed by such systems, both the risk of circuit crosstalk and the metabolic burden resulting from the expression of numerous foreign genes are increasing. Therefore, systems based on a single type of cells are no longer feasible. Synthetic biology approaches with multiple subpopulations of specifically functionalized cells, wired by artificial cell-cell communication systems, provide an attractive and powerful alternative. Here we review recent applications of synthetic cell-cell communication systems with a specific focus on recent advances with fungal hosts.
Highlights
Cellular communication is a widespread phenomenon in nature, ranging from bacterial quorum sensing [1,2,3,4], communication of fungi by pheromones [5, 6] or quorum sensing molecules [7], interactions of microbes with their hosts [8, 9] or with each other [10] to cellular communication in multicellular eukaryotes [11]
Well characterized communication systems can be adopted into synthetic biology approaches to allow artificial cell-cell communication [13,14,15,16]
Synthetic biology approaches allow the implementation of numerous devices and systems, within the fields reviewed here and far beyond
Summary
Cellular communication is a widespread phenomenon in nature, ranging from bacterial quorum sensing [1,2,3,4], communication of fungi by pheromones [5, 6] or quorum sensing molecules [7], interactions of microbes with their hosts [8, 9] or with each other [10] to cellular communication in multicellular eukaryotes [11]. We review recent approaches and applications as well as future challenges of synthetic genetic circuits utilizing artificial communication systems, especially highlighting the advances achieved with fungal host cells. Synthetic quorum sensing systems In numerous studies, autoinducers have been applied to generate artificial cellular communication in order to synchronize the behavior of an entire population.
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