Spatial engineering of E. coli with addressable phase-separated RNAs.
Cell
; 185(20): 3823-3837.e23, 2022 09 29.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36179672
ABSTRACT
Biochemical processes often require spatial regulation and specific microenvironments. The general lack of organelles in bacteria limits the potential of bioengineering complex intracellular reactions. Here, we demonstrate synthetic membraneless organelles in Escherichia coli termed transcriptionally engineered addressable RNA solvent droplets (TEARS). TEARS are assembled from RNA-binding protein recruiting domains fused to poly-CAG repeats that spontaneously drive liquid-liquid phase separation from the bulk cytoplasm. Targeting TEARS with fluorescent proteins revealed multilayered structures with composition and reaction robustness governed by non-equilibrium dynamics. We show that TEARS provide organelle-like bioprocess isolation for sequestering biochemical pathways, controlling metabolic branch points, buffering mRNA translation rates, and scaffolding protein-protein interactions. We anticipate TEARS to be a simple and versatile tool for spatially controlling E. coli biochemistry. Particularly, the modular design of TEARS enables applications without expression fine-tuning, simplifying the design-build-test cycle of bioengineering.
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Bases de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Organelas
/
Escherichia coli
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Cell
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article