In a new field called “synthetic biology,” novel biomaterials are being engineered to replace or aid in the repair of damaged body tissues. Some are scaffolds that contain biological signals that attract stem cells and guide their growth into specific tissue types. Mastery of synthetic tissue engineering could make it possible to regenerate tissues and organs.
The spontaneous fusion between cationic vesicles and fatty acid vesicles has been revealed by assessing the mixing of their aqueous contents. Vesicle fusion can provide an useful “origin of life” model.
A microfluidic technique uses a continuous fluid stream to generate monodisperse unilamellar phospholipid vesicles from a single bilayer (see picture). Since the vesicles are robust and efficiently encapsulate high concentrations of various molecules, they are useful as delivery vehicles and as model cellular systems.
synthetic biologists keep getting lucky, then maybe — just maybe — they will be able to engineer life “on the scale of building a mouse, like the whole thing,
