In vitro phospholipid biosynthesis for growing and dividing minimal cells

Natural life is extraordinarily complex, which by definition means that it has many interconnected and functioning parts. The goal of synthetic biology is to engineer living systems, though due to their very complexity they remain recalcitrant to engineering. What if it were possible to reduce the complexity to a finite amount of parts that are...

Cell-Free Phospholipid Biosynthesis by Gene-Encoded Enzymes Reconstituted in Liposomes

The goal of bottom-up synthetic biology culminates in the assembly of an entire cell from separate biological building blocks. One major challenge resides in the in vitro production and implementation of complex genetic and metabolic pathways that can support essential cellular functions. Here, we show that phospholipid biosynthesis, a multiple...