In Situ Self‐Assembly of Coacervate Microdroplets into Viable Artificial Cell Wall with Heritability

Abstract

Creating an intelligent artificial cell wall to endow fabricated cells with more advanced functionalities is highly desirable. Here, an efficient and cytocompatible approach to generate a type of viable artificial cell wall based on direct self-assembly of coacervate microdroplets on individual cellular surface is developed, which can protect the fabricated cell against various external stresses and can then prolong the storage of the fabricated cells over two months. Moreover, as a type of viable artificial cell wall, it can not only help the fabricated cell sequester nutrients or functionalized substances such as catalase, or iron oxide nanoparticles actively from the solution which then makes the fabricated cell more versatile but also allows the fabricated cell proliferate. Significantly, the artificial cell wall also shows heritable behavior that can reserve its protection to as far as the third-generation daughter cell. Undoubtedly, such an illustrated artificial cell wall provides a conceptually new and promising technique toward the cell-based research as well as application of next generation.

A Removable Artificial Cell Wall for Withstanding Ciprofloxacin

“…Based on the investigation of coacervate microdroplets mentioned above, both CMCS and DEX‐COOH were proved to be successfully anchored in droplet structure, which suggested the possibility of constructing a biomimetic cell wall on the surface of S. cerevisiae cells. [ 25 ] Subsequently, the protective layer clothing was constructed on the surface of native S. cerevisiae cells to generate the encapsulated cells (C–D coated@cells). The fluorescence microscopy images of the C–D coated@cells that were constructed by FITC‐labeled CMCS and RBITC‐labeled DEX‐COOH indicated the successful anchor of the polysaccharide building blocks on the cell surface ( Figure 2 a–c).…”

“…[ 24 ] Our group has developed a coacervate self‐assembly method to construct artificial cell walls, which endowed the cell with functions such as cytoprotection and sequestration, and thereby protected the encapsulated cell against Escherichia coli or silver nanoparticles. [ 25 ]…”

“…[ 28 ] Due to the adsorption of carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS) toward antibiotics, the effect of antibiotics can be effectively reduced to improve the immunostimulatory of aquatic animal species. [ 9,29 ] Therefore, based on the previous artificial cell walls constructed in our group, [ 25,30 ] CMCS and carboxyl dextran (DEX‐COOH), the counterparts of cationic polyelectrolyte and anionic polyelectrolyte, were utilized as building blocks to in situ fabricate artificial cell wall on the Saccharomyces cerevisiae (a typical probiotic) surface by coacervate self‐assembly. This strategy is a rapid and simple method to improve the resistance of probiotics toward antibiotics and thereby promoted the viability of cell when it was exposed to ciprofloxacin.…”

Single‐Cell Nanometric Coating Towards Whole‐Cell‐Based Biodevices and Biosensors

“…The coatings constructed based on the bio‐interface further offered the protection of cells against the high sunlight stress, harmful UV, and abrupt pH changes of the system, thus making the encapsulated photosynthetic cells excellent candidates for the assembly of photosynthetic biodevices . The bio‐interface can also be created using other materials, such as β‐galactosidase (β‐gal), PEI, polydopamine, and tannic acid . For example, an emerging novel class of porous materials, Metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs), can be directly coated on yeast cells, using biofriendly reagents under physiological conditions, with the robust thermal and chemical stability .…”

“…As to the example of the bio‐interface constructed using tannic acid, Huang et al . reported a nice work . They developed a new fabrication of the uniform nanocoating based on the one‐step self‐assembly of coacervate containing cationized bovine serum albumin (BSA‐NH 2 ) and anionized dextran (Dextran‐COOH) on the tannic‐acid‐covered cell surface (Figure ).…”