Recent Advances in Liposome-Based Molecular Robots

Abstract

A molecular robot is a microorganism-imitating micro robot that is designed from the molecular level and constructed by bottom-up approaches. As with conventional robots, molecular robots consist of three essential robotics elements: control of intelligent systems, sensors, and actuators, all integrated into a single micro compartment. Due to recent developments in microfluidic technologies, DNA nanotechnologies, synthetic biology, and molecular engineering, these individual parts have been developed, with the final picture beginning to come together. In this review, we describe recent developments of these sensors, actuators, and intelligence systems that can be applied to liposome-based molecular robots. First, we explain liposome generation for the compartments of molecular robots. Next, we discuss the emergence of robotics functions by using and functionalizing liposomal membranes. Then, we discuss actuators and intelligence via the encapsulation of chemicals into liposomes. Finally, the future vision and the challenges of molecular robots are described.

Identifying and Manipulating Giant Vesicles: Review of Recent Approaches

“…Therefore, if a water-soluble fluorescent molecule is encapsulated inside the GV and its lamellarity is one, the encapsulated molecule permeates and diffuses to the outside of the GV through the pores of the α-hemolysin. Recently, de novo designed transmembrane pores of proteins or DNA origami have also been reported by several groups [ 29 , 30 ].…”

Liposomes as Multifunctional Nano-Carriers for Medicinal Natural Products

“…On one hand, new materials such as cancer membrane, synthetic lipid, blood cell membrane, have exhibited promising advantages in better biocompatibility and targeted delivery. Furthermore, engineering strategy was applied to construct an intelligent platform, such as a liposome-based robot ( Inaba et al, 2018 ; Shoji and Kawano, 2020 ), bacterial motors ( Zhang et al, 2013b ; Dogra et al, 2016 ) and so on. On the other hand, physical tool, such as focused ultrasound, has improved the delivery efficiency of liposomal paclitaxel to mice brain and tumor ( Shen et al, 2017 ).…”

Spontaneous and Driven Growth of Multicellular Lipid Compartments to Millimeter Size from Porous Polymer Structures**

“…The essential molecular systems of living cells, such as gene expression, [4,5] evolution, [6] photosynthesis, [7,8] replication, [9,10] have been studied to emulate their function in a bottom‐up manner. There have also been reported liposome‐based structures containing artificially designed molecular systems which aims to introduce information processing circuits not used by natural cells [11,12] . Just as organisms in nature have evolved from unicellular to multicellular, research on multicompartmentalization of artificial cells has received much attention [13,14] .…”