Professor Pan Tingrui’s group from Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, and School of Engineering Science, University of Science and Technology of China, and Cheemeng Tan’s group from Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California Davis, published a review paper entitled “Building protein networks in synthetic systems from the bottom-up” on Biotechnology Advances, an international peer-reviewed journal that is devoted to fields of Biotechnology. Professor Pan is the corresponding author.

  Synthetic protein networks can integrate natural or synthetic proteins into systems with specific biological functions, which is the latest trend in synthetic biology. The study reviews the underlying technologies for assembling protein networks in liposomes, water-in-oil droplets, and biomaterials from the bottom-up. It covers the recent applications of protein networks in biological transduction pathways, energy self-supplying systems, cellular environmental sensors, and cell-free protein scaffolds.

Pan’s team reviews new technologies for assembling protein networks, including multiprotein purification methods, high-throughput assay screen platforms, and controllable fusion of liposomes. Synthetic biologists can build more complex "artificial cells" only based on controlled and high-throughput protein assembly techniques. It is worth mentioning that the microfluidic droplet technology studied by Pan’s team has great potential in the construction of protein network. The technology can construct protein networks by high throughput, which is of great technical value for promoting the research and application of protein network.

Link:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0734975021000598?via%3Dihub