Macroscopic control of cell electrophysiology through ion channel expression
- Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Abstract
Cells convert electrical signals into chemical outputs to facilitate the active transport of information across larger distances. This electrical-to-chemical conversion requires a tightly regulated expression of ion channels. Alterations of ion channel expression provide landmarks of numerous pathological diseases, such as cardiac arrhythmia, epilepsy, or cancer. Although the activity of ion channels can be locally regulated by external light or chemical stimulus, it remains challenging to coordinate the expression of ion channels on extended spatial-temporal scales. Here, we engineered yeast S. cerevisiae to read and convert chemical concentrations into a dynamic potassium channel expression. A synthetic dual-feedback circuit controls the expression of engineered potassium channels through phytohormones auxin and salicylate to produce a macroscopically coordinated pulses of the plasma membrane potential (PMP). Our study provides a compact experimental model to control electrical activity through gene expression in eukaryotic cell populations setting grounds for various cellular engineering, synthetic biology, and potential therapeutic applications.
Data availability
All data are shown in the manuscript, figure supplements or the supplementary files. Plasmids have been deposited to Addgene lab database https://www.addgene.org/plasmids/articles/28233142/
Article and author information
Author details
Mario García-Navarrete
Funding
Comunidad de Madrid (Programa de Atraccion de Talento 2017-2023 2017-T1/BIO-5654)
- Krzysztof Wabnik
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (PGC2018-093387-A-I00)
- Krzysztof Wabnik
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, García-Navarrete 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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Macroscopic control of cell electrophysiology through ion channel expression
eLife 11:e78075.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78075
