Bottom-up assembly of light-driven motile biohybrid construct (MotileHybrid)

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Sonja Verena Albers; Dr. Nika Otrin
• Subject Area: Biochemistry
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 569088935

Motility is a key feature of living cells, which allows them to respond to changing environmental conditions and directed movement towards more-favourable conditions. The goal of the project is to implement motility in a minimal synthetic cell, i.e., in model giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs). Archaella, the motility machinery of Archaea, will be reconstituted into hybrid polymer/lipid GUVs by two approaches: either via membrane fusion between 1) archaea membrane ghosts and GUVs, or 2) archaella-containing large unilamellar vesicles (LUVs) and GUVs. In the second approach, archaella will be first partially isolated and reconstituted into LUVs. For successful membrane fusion, membrane repulsion and hydration forces will have to be overcome, which will be achieved either by changing membrane surface charge or by fusogenic peptides (SNARE proteins). To attain directed swimming motility of GUVs (instead of random spinning motion), archaella will be condensed in micro-sized domains. The latter will be achieved by lateral phase separation of polymer and lipid phase and partitioning of archaella into lipid domain. Energy, in the form of ATP, required for activation of archaella rotation, will be supplied via ATP-generating nanoreactors comprising proton pump bacteriorhodopsin (bR) and F1FO-ATPase, whereby proton pumping will be activated by light.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants