Aarhus University Seal

Publications

Recent research news on Artificial Biology


Distinct Network Morphologies from In Situ Polymerization of Microtubules in Giant Polymer-Lipid Hybrid Vesicles

Creating artificial cells with a dynamic cytoskeleton, akin to those in living cells, is a major goal in bottom-up synthetic biology. In this study, we demonstrate the in situ polymerization of microtubules encapsulated in giant polymer-lipid hybrid vesicles (GHVs) composed of 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine and an amphiphilic block copolymer. The block copolymer is comprised of poly(cholesteryl methacrylate-co-butyl methacrylate) as the hydrophobic block and either poly(6-O-methacryloyl-D-galactopyranose) or poly(carboxyethyl acrylate) as the hydrophilic extension. Depending on the concentrations of guanosine triphosphate (GTP) or its slowly hydrolyzable analog, guanosine-5′-[(α,β)-methyleno]triphosphate (GMPCPP), different microtubule morphologies are observed, including encapsulated microtubule networks, spike protrusions, as well as membrane-associated or aggregated microtubules. Overall, this work represents a step forward in mimicking the cellular cytoskeletons and uncovering the influence of membrane composition on microtubule morphologies.

Recent publications by network


Sort by: Date | Author | Title

Braren, I., Greunke, K., Grunwald, T., Pilette, C., Mempel, M., Bredehorst, R., Ring, J., Spillner, E. & Ollert, M. (2011). Quantitation of serum IgE by using chimeras of human IgE receptor and avian immunoglobulin domains. Analytical Biochemistry, 412(2), 134-140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ab.2010.12.013
Simonsen, M. & Pedersen, C. N. S. (2011). Rapid Computation of Distance Estimators from Nucleotide and Amino Acid Alignments. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing Association for Computing Machinery.