This project aims to reconstitute subcellular systems into the femtoliter chamber array. We have developed various types of artificial cell reactors. Cell-free transcription-translation system was implemented into the droplet-type femtoliter chamber. Taking advantage of the highly uniform protein production in this system, we are currently testing the utility of this system for directed evolution of enzyme. To mimic natural cells closely, we also developed the arrayed lipid bilayer chamber array system (ALBiCs) [1-3]. ALBiCs allows reconstitution of membrane proteins for the single-molecule analysis of transporter proteins that have been quite difficult to characterize especially at single-molecule level [1,3].
We are also exploring the application of ALBiC for hybrid systems with a living cell. For this purpose, we are investigating the viability of the hybrid system with E. coli. We are planning to implement an artificial genome DNA into the artificial cell reactor to test the possibility to boot the artificial genome. 1. R. Watanabe and N. Soga et al., 2014 Nat. Commun. 5, 4519
2. R. Watanabe et al., 2014 Sci. Rep. 4, 7076
3. N. Soga, et al., 2014 Sci. Rep. 5, 11025