Abstract
The assembly of channel proteins into vesicle membranes is a useful strategy to control activities of vesicle-based systems. Here, we developed a membrane AND gate that responds to both a fatty acid and a pore-forming channel protein to induce the release of encapsulated cargo. We explored how membrane composition affects the functional assembly of α-hemolysin into phospholipid vesicles as a function of oleic acid content and α-hemolysin concentration. We then showed that we could induce α-hemolysin assembly when we added oleic acid micelles to a specific composition of phospholipid vesicles. Finally, we demonstrated that our membrane AND gate could be coupled to a gene expression system. Our study provides a new method to control the temporal dynamics of vesicle permeability by controlling when the functional assembly of a channel protein into synthetic vesicles occurs. Furthermore, a membrane AND gate that utilizes membrane-associating biomolecules introduces a new way to implement Boolean logic that should complement genetic logic circuits and ultimately enhance the capabilities of artificial cellular systems.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1224-1230 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | ACS synthetic biology |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 21 2019 |
Keywords
- artificial cell
- cell-free expression
- membrane logic gate
- protein-membrane interactions
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Biomedical Engineering
- Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous)