LC Seminar 11/20- David Glass

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Time: 1:00 PM

“Engineering synthetic multicellularity for understanding consortia and tissue behavior”

How can collections of cells can function together as cohesive multicellular groups? This question is hard to study in naturally existing multicellular organisms, because even basic multicellular behaviors like cell-cell signaling, cell-cell adhesion, and differentiation tend to be highly coupled in these organisms. Differentiation in particular is crucial for multicellularity. However, it is inherently susceptible to mutant cells that fail to differentiate. These mutants outcompete normal cells by excessive self-renewal. It remains unclear what mechanisms can resist such mutant expansion. I will discuss my work in demonstrating a solution by engineering a synthetic differentiation circuit in Escherichia coli that selects against non-differentiating mutants. The circuit provides tunable production of synthetic analogs of stem, progenitor, and differentiated cells, and resists mutations by coupling differentiation to production of an essential enzyme — disadvantaging non-differentiating mutants. The results provide insight into the stability of differentiation and demonstrate a powerful method for engineering evolutionarily stable multicellular consortia.

Location: Laufer Center Lecture Hall 101