Mimicking a single cell structure: From lipid membranes to extracellul…

It is very difficult to define “how a living organism maintains its life”, due to its vast complex disciplines, including its structure, function, growth, origin, and evolution. However, there are many progresses in cell biology, by narrowing the target to an individual cell, which is a building block to compose all living things. Therefore, mimicking structural and functional “artificial cells” can open a new horizon in biophysics, since a cell is also considered to be the basic unit in many pathological processes. Current achievements of researches in mimicking cellular structures are including 1) assembling cellular membranes, composed of mainly phospholipids, and 2) determining the cytoplasmic skeletons, and it will provide a key information to produce, at least, physically (visoelastically controlled) and chemically (lipid based) controlled cellular vesicles when those structures are combined into a single structure. Another important step to produce “artificial cells” is how we can produce cellular organelles (i.e. mitochondria, ribosomes, Golgi, nucleus, etc) in a plasma cellular vesicle. Not like a cell membrane, mostly having a spherical structure, structures of cellular organelles varies greatly, but uniquely. While a nucleus and many vesicles have a spherical shape, ERs have an interconnected network structure of tubules and vesicles. A mammalian mitochondrion has a double membrane structure (elongated vesicle-like outer membrane and ruptured and folded inner membrane). In this study, we would like to find a way to produce bio-mimetic lipid membrane structures, aiming to create a single cellular boundary. Then, we could insert various components which are mostly providing cellular functions and structures. We will introduce how we can build up a simple lipid membranes to functionalized complex membrane, and by addition of extra-, intracellular proteins, we could build an artificial cellular structures, mimicking a living cellular structures, physically and functionally.