A robust and tunable mitotic oscillator in artificial cells
- University of Michigan, United States
- University of Science and Technology of China, China
- Wayne State University, United States
Abstract
Single-cell analysis is pivotal to deciphering complex phenomena like heterogeneity, bistability, and asynchronous oscillations, where a population ensemble cannot represent individual behaviors. Bulk cell-free systems, despite having unique advantages of manipulation and characterization of biochemical networks, lack the essential single-cell information to understand a class of out-of-steady-state dynamics including cell cycles. Here, by encapsulating Xenopus egg extracts in water-in-oil microemulsions, we developed artificial cells that are adjustable in sizes and periods, sustain mitotic oscillations for over 30 cycles, and function in forms from the simplest cytoplasmic-only to the more complicated ones involving nuclear dynamics, mimicking real cells. Such innate flexibility and robustness make it key to studying clock properties like tunability and stochasticity. Our results also highlight energy as an important regulator of cell cycles. We demonstrate a simple, powerful, and likely generalizable strategy of integrating strengths of single-cell approaches into conventional in vitro systems to study complex clock functions.
Data availability
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Data from: A robust and tunable mitotic oscillator in artificial cellsAvailable at Dryad Digital Repository under a CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (MIRA #GM119688)
- Qiong Yang
National Science Foundation (CAREER Grant #1553031)
- Qiong Yang
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Sloan Research Fellowship)
- Qiong Yang
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Guan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A robust and tunable mitotic oscillator in artificial cells
eLife 7:e33549.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.33549
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