The Usual Suspects 2019: of Chips, Droplets, Synthesis, and Artificial Cells
Christoph Eilenberger,
Sarah Spitz,
Barbara Eva Maria Bachmann,
Eva Kathrin Ehmoser,
Peter Ertl,
Mario Rothbauer
Affiliations
Christoph Eilenberger
Institute of Applied Synthetic Chemistry, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Faculty of Technical Chemistry, Vienna University of Technology, A-1060 Vienna, Austria
Sarah Spitz
Institute of Applied Synthetic Chemistry, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Faculty of Technical Chemistry, Vienna University of Technology, A-1060 Vienna, Austria
Barbara Eva Maria Bachmann
Austrian Cluster for Tissue Regeneration and Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Experimental and Clinical Traumatology, Allgemeine Unfallversicherungsanstalt (AUVA) Research Centre, A-1200 Vienna, Austria
Eva Kathrin Ehmoser
Institute of Synthetic Bioarchitectures, Department of Nanobiotechnology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, A-1190 Vienna, Austria
Peter Ertl
Institute of Applied Synthetic Chemistry, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Faculty of Technical Chemistry, Vienna University of Technology, A-1060 Vienna, Austria
Mario Rothbauer
Institute of Applied Synthetic Chemistry, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Faculty of Technical Chemistry, Vienna University of Technology, A-1060 Vienna, Austria
Synthetic biology aims to understand fundamental biological processes in more detail than possible for actual living cells. Synthetic biology can combat decomposition and build-up of artificial experimental models under precisely controlled and defined environmental and biochemical conditions. Microfluidic systems can provide the tools to improve and refine existing synthetic systems because they allow control and manipulation of liquids on a micro- and nanoscale. In addition, chip-based approaches are predisposed for synthetic biology applications since they present an opportune technological toolkit capable of fully automated high throughput and content screening under low reagent consumption. This review critically highlights the latest updates in microfluidic cell-free and cell-based protein synthesis as well as the progress on chip-based artificial cells. Even though progress is slow for microfluidic synthetic biology, microfluidic systems are valuable tools for synthetic biology and may one day help to give answers to long asked questions of fundamental cell biology and life itself.
