Technologies and Processes at the Nanoscale (TPNE)

TITLE: Biosensing soft robot and synthetic cellular nanosystems

DATE: 06/04/2022

NAME: João Filipe da Fonte Machado

 Technologies and Processes at the Nanoscale (TPNE)

RESUME

In this resume has the main goal to understand how nanosystems can be applied on biology and their
functionalities. In the class was analysed two scientific articles in which I will also use them for the basis for this
resume.

One article proved that the integration of synthetic cellular components of biological circuits and artificial cellular
nanosystems can increase the robustness of gene expression of macromolecular crowding. Moreover, in this article
showed that ubiquitous cellular modules, including genetic components, a negative feedback loop and the size of
the crowding molecules can fine-tube gene circuit response to molecular crowding.[1]

The other article focused on development of biosensing soft robot. This technology integrates synthetic biology
and soft robotics to advance sensory, diagnostic, and therapeutic functionality of bioinspired machines. Basically,
biosensing soft robot is soft gripper that uses engineered bacteria for detecting chemicals in the environment, a
flexible light-emitting diode (LED) circuit for converting biological to electronic signals, and soft pneu-net actuators
for converting the electronic signals to movement of the gripper. This kind of gripper can use chemical sensing and
feedback to make actionable decisions during a pick-and-place operation.[2]

Before diving deep on these articles, I must highlight the importance and the potential of synthetic and hybrid
systems. These kinds of systems can be the key element for understanding the fundamental biological principles and
to discover therapeutic treatments and bioenergy production. The reason that makes this possible is due to the fact
that these systems have more precise control and predictive modelling of systems by minimizing cellular
components. Although, by reducing the complexity of this systems results of elimination of features of the cellular
micro-environment.[1] Furthermore, synthetic biology allows the development of bioinspired architectures in
different length scales. For this uses soft materials that has robust mechanical properties and rich versatility of
natural biological tissues and organisms.[2]

On the first article mentioned by this resume, was performed an investigation of the impact of molecular crowding
on gene expression. To do that, was chosen the phage T7 RNA polymerase (RNAP) because of its well-known
characteristics and to visualize the response, was created a red fluorescent protein. After defining the requirements
of this experiment, they analysed the diffusion dynamics of RNAP in different crowding environments and they
conclude that the increment of immobile fractions due to a greater subdiffusion fractions of RNAP in the crowded
environments, allows the polymerase to explore a smaller space than the theoretical predictions. After doing other
investigations like the study of impact on biding of T7RNAP to a T7 promoter, they have demonstrated clearly that
molecular crowding increases the robustness of gene expression, and that molecular crowding can be harnessed for
the control of a basic genetic construct in artificial cells.[1]

On the second article, the main challenge is the integration of cells with soft robots because of the lack of an
interfacial module, in other words, it is hard to establish a signal exchange between the external environment and
cells, communication between the cells and internal electronics, and control between the internal electronic and
host mechanics of the robot. To address this challenge was used a soft material carrier medium like a robot housing.
They controlled the interface between the external environment and the hybrid bio-light-emitting diode (LED)-
actuator module that allowed for chemical diffusion and prevented the escape of the bacteria while maintaining the
flexibility of the soft robot. In conclusion, was possible to implement an embedded biosensing module within a soft
robotic.[2]

In general, nanosystems makes atomically specified structures and devices under programmatic control, for
example they perform atomically precise manufacturing. Complex 3D nanoscale structures exist in the form of folded
linear molecules such as DNA origami and proteins. It is also possible to build very small atomically precise structures
using scanning probe microscopy to construct molecules, but it is not yet possible to combine components in a
systematic way to build larger, more complex systems. In conclusion, this field requires more research.[3]
 Technologies and Processes at the Nanoscale (TPNE)

References

[1] Cheemeng Tan, Saumya Saurabh, Marcel P.Bruchez, Russel Schwartz and Philip LeDuc, “Molecular crowding
shapes gene expression in synthetic cellular nanosystems”, nature nanotechnology, 2013

[2] Kyle B. Justus, Tess Hellebrekers, Daniel D.Lewis, Adam Wood, Christian Ingham, Carmel Majidi, Philip R.LeDuc
and Cheemeng Tan, “A biosensing soft robot: Autonomous parsing of chemical signals through integrated organic
and inorganic interfaces”, science robotics, 2019

[3] On this website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_nanosystems