Lifeboat Foundation

In Brief

• Researchers have discovered that placing synthetic genetic circuits in liposomes prevents them from interfering with one another, while still allowing them to communicate.
• Not only could this new form of “modular” genetic circuits lead to more complex engineered circuits, it could also provide insight as to how the earliest life on Earth formed.

By applying engineering principles to biology, researchers can create biological systems that don’t exist naturally. A problem of synthetic biology, however, is that these engineered genetic circuits can interfere with each other. While beneficial on their own, some of these man-made circuits become useless when they come in contact with each other, and this bars them from being used to solve complex biological problems.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have found a way around this by creating a synthetic cell barrier to separate genetic circuits from each other, preventing interference while still allowing the circuits to communicate with each other when researchers want them to.