Controlled exchange of protein and nucleic acid signals from and between synthetic minimal cells.

Synthetic minimal cells are a class of bioreactors that have some, but not all, functions of live cells. Here, we report a critical step toward the development of a bottom-up minimal cell: cellular export of functional protein and RNA products. We used cell-penetrating peptide tags to translocate payloads across a synthetic cell vesicle membrane. We demonstrated efficient transport of active enzymes and transport of nucleic acid payloads by RNA-binding proteins. We investigated influence of a concentration gradient alongside other factors on the efficiency of the translocation, and we show a method to increase product accumulation in one location. We demonstrate the use of this technology to engineer molecular communication between different populations of synthetic cells, to exchange protein and nucleic acid signals. The synthetic minimal cell production and export of proteins or nucleic acids allows experimental designs that approach the complexity and relevancy of natural biological systems. A record of this paper's transparent peer review process is included in the supplemental information.

A gene expression control technology for cell-free systems and synthetic cells via targeted gene silencing and transfection.

Synthetic cells, expressing proteins using cell-free transcription-translation (TXTL), is a technology utilized for a variety of applications, such as investigating natural gene pathways, metabolic engineering, drug development or bioinformatics. For all these purposes, the ability to precisely control gene expression is essential. Various strategies to control gene expression in TXTL have been developed; however, further advancements on gene-specific and straightforward regulation methods are still needed. Here, we present a method of control of gene expression in TXTL using a "silencing oligo": a short oligonucleotide, designed with a particular secondary structure, that binds to the target messenger RNA. We demonstrated that silencing oligo inhibits protein expression in TXTL in a sequence-dependent manner. We showed that silencing oligo activity is associated with RNase H activity in bacterial TXTL. To complete the gene expression control toolbox for synthetic cells, we also engineered a first transfection system. We demonstrated the transfection of various payloads, enabling the introduction of RNA and DNA of different lengths to synthetic cell liposomes. Finally, we combined the silencing oligo and the transfection technologies, demonstrating control of gene expression by transfecting silencing oligo into synthetic minimal cells.

T7Max transcription system.

BACKGROUND: Efficient cell-free protein expression from linear DNA templates has remained a challenge primarily due to template degradation. In addition, the yields of transcription in cell-free systems lag behind transcriptional efficiency of live cells. Most commonly used in vitro translation systems utilize T7 RNA polymerase, which is also the enzyme included in many commercial kits. RESULTS: Here we present characterization of a variant of T7 RNA polymerase promoter that acts to significantly increase the yields of gene expression within in vitro systems. We have demonstrated that T7Max increases the yield of translation in many types of commonly used in vitro protein expression systems. We also demonstrated increased protein expression yields from linear templates, allowing the use of T7Max driven expression from linear templates. CONCLUSIONS: The modified promoter, termed T7Max, recruits standard T7 RNA polymerase, so no protein engineering is needed to take advantage of this method. This technique could be used with any T7 RNA polymerase- based in vitro protein expression system.