Biomaterials – cells articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plasma membrane lysis is an effective anticancer strategy that mostly relies on soluble molecular membranolytic agents, while nanomaterial-based membranolytic agents have been unexplored. Herein, the authors report a nano- and molecular-scale multi-patterning strategy for fabricating mesoporous membranolytic nanoperforators with an intrinsic membranolytic activity.

    • Yannan Yang
    • , Shiwei Chen
    •  & Chengzhong Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is increasing interest in measuring the mechanical properties of living cells. Here, the authors develop a method to simultaneously measure the cell mass and two parameters related to its natural oscillation or resonance frequencies.

    • Sophie Herzog
    • , Gotthold Fläschner
    •  & Daniel J. Müller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Membrane-decorated nanomedicines often suffer from reduced efficacy caused by membrane artefacts during the coating process. Here the authors show that intracellularly gelated macrophages preserve membrane properties, stay stable under ambient temperature, and show therapeutic effects in murine models of joint and lung inflammation.

    • Cheng Gao
    • , Qingfu Wang
    •  & Ruibing Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Achieving organoleptic properties of conventional meat is important for cultured meat production. Here, the authors demonstrate that the texture, flavor, and nutritional content of cultured meat can be significantly enhanced by regulating cell differentiation inside hydrogel scaffolds.

    • Milae Lee
    • , Sohyeon Park
    •  & Jinkee Hong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Constructing polymer-based mimics on the surface of cells has potential to manipulate cell behavior, but precise control of grafting sites is challenging. Here, the authors report a method for site selected radical polymerization on cell surfaces by metabolic labelling.

    • Yihong Zhong
    • , Lijia Xu
    •  & Huangxian Ju

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Engineered living materials (ELMs) are emerging as a field at the intersection of materials science and synthetic biology. Here, the authors describe a photosynthetic ELM composed of genetically engineered cyanobacteria in a hydrogel matrix, capable of bioremediation and inducible cell death.

    • Debika Datta
    • , Elliot L. Weiss
    •  & Jonathan K. Pokorski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bioprinting has potential in the biofabrication of three dimensional tissues, but is poorly suited to the manipulation of neural organoids. Here, the authors develop a bioprinting platform to allow the arrangement of organoids to form assembloids.

    • Julien G. Roth
    • , Lucia G. Brunel
    •  & Sarah C. Heilshorn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, the authors synthetized hydrogels that mimic cryptic sites in the native extracellular matrix (ECM) using switch peptides. They report how in response to enzymes on the surface of endothelial cells the inert matrix is transformed into a bioadhesive synthetic ECM.

    • Yumeng Zhu
    • , Yulia Shmidov
    •  & John B. Matson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Extrusion bioprinting can be used to produce living materials but controlling cell microenvironments is challenging. Here, the authors use a type of core-shell microgel ink that decouples cell culture from material processing to produce functional materials with a range of potential applications.

    • Yangteng Ou
    • , Shixiang Cao
    •  & Tuomas P. J. Knowles

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bioengineering live tissues has remained challenging due to limited nutrient exchange in the growing tissues. Here, the authors have developed micro-perfused 2-photon printing of 3D microfluidics, to engineer large-scale, viable and functional neural and hepatic 3D tissues.

    • Sergei Grebenyuk
    • , Abdel Rahman Abdel Fattah
    •  & Adrian Ranga

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase separation provides intracellular organisation via membraneless entities called biomolecular condensates. Here, the authors show that short, cationic peptide tags can drive biomolecular condensation of engineered proteins in E. coli through associative interactions with RNA.

    • Vivian Yeong
    • , Jou-wen Wang
    •  & Allie C. Obermeyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human mesenchymal stem cells differentiate in response to mechanical adhesive interactions in their microenvironment. Here, the authors develop a culture platform that can dynamically mimic the cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions associated with development and mesenchymal differentiation in vivo.

    • Zheng Zhang
    • , Baoyong Sha
    •  & Min Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Engineered living materials (ELMs) embed living cells in a biopolymer matrix to create novel materials with tailored functions. In this work, the authors engineered bacteria to grow novel macroscopic materials that can be reshaped, functionalized, and used to filter contaminated water while also showing that the stiffness of these materials can be tuned through genetic changes.

    • Sara Molinari
    • , Robert F. Tesoriero Jr.
    •  & Caroline M. Ajo-Franklin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Engineering peptide assembly that controls integrin ligand presentation on the molecular level possesses by far the highest ligand density, expanding the perspective of ligand-density-dependent modulation.

    • Xunwu Hu
    • , Sona Rani Roy
    •  & Ye Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tissue boundaries in our body separate organs and enable healing, but boundary mechanics are not well known. Here, the authors define mechanical rules for colliding cell monolayers and use these rules to make complex, predictable tessellations.

    • Matthew A. Heinrich
    • , Ricard Alert
    •  & Daniel J. Cohen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Our understanding of how compartmentalisation and intercellular communication can tune enzyme reactions is still in its infancy. Here, the authors show that multi-enzyme reactions within semi-permeable compartments have distinct properties compared to reactions in buffer solution.

    • Adrian Zambrano
    • , Giorgio Fracasso
    •  & T-Y. Dora Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most attempts to co-cultivate the artificial microbial communities fail mostly due to the mismatched rates of consumption and production of nutrients among subpopulations. Here, the authors develop a microbial swarmbot mediated spatial segregation method to assemble stably coexisting consortia with both flexibility and precision.

    • Lin Wang
    • , Xi Zhang
    •  & Zhuojun Dai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Patient-derived tumour organoids are important preclinical models but suffer from variability from the use of basement-membrane extract and cell contamination. Here, the authors report on the development of mimetic nanofibrilar hydrogel which supports tumour organoid growth with reduced batch variability and cell contamination.

    • Elisabeth Prince
    • , Jennifer Cruickshank
    •  & Eugenia Kumacheva

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this manuscript, an electric-field-assisted self-assembly technique that can allow controllable and scalable fabrication of 3-dimensional block copolymer (BCP)-based artificial cell membranes (3DBCPMs) immobilized on predefined locations is presented.

    Topographically and chemically structured microwell array templates facilitate uniform patterning of BCPs and serve as reactors for the effective growth of 3DBCPMs, which diverse shapes, sizes and stability can be tuned by modulating the BCP concentration and the amplitude/frequency of the electric field.

    The potential of 3DBCPMs for a variety of biological applications is highlighted by performance of in vitro protein-membrane assays and mimicking of human intestinal organs.

    • Dong-Hyun Kang
    • , Won Bae Han
    •  & Tae Song Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    3D brain organoids have been used to investigate human brain development and pathology. Here the authors establish human ventral midbrain organoids coupled with single cell sequencing to study developing and mature dopamine neurons and use silk scaffolding to generate bioengineered brain organoids

    • Alessandro Fiorenzano
    • , Edoardo Sozzi
    •  & Malin Parmar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mammary morphogenesis is a complex process. Here the authors describe how stem cells build a three-dimensional self-organizing multi-lineage tissue by showing that positional signals from the extracellular matrix through the collagen receptor DDR1 lead stem cells to differentiate into multi-lineage committed multi-layered progeny.

    • Gat Rauner
    • , Dexter X. Jin
    •  & Charlotte Kuperwasser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mesenchymal stem cells adopt differentiation pathways based upon mechanical cues in their environment which change throughout development. Here the authors develop a material and culture system to modify and measure the degree to which cells retain cumulative effects of mechanosensing to explore how cells erase the memory of some cues while locking in memory of others.

    • Cheng Zhang
    • , Hongyuan Zhu
    •  & Min Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The independent control of substrate stiffness and tethering of extracellular matrix to substrates for mechanical signalling investigations remains challenging. Here the authors present StemBond hydrogels, with stable ECM tethering that can be varied independently of stiffness, and use these to modulate the function of mouse and human pluripotent stem cells.

    • Céline Labouesse
    • , Bao Xiu Tan
    •  & Kevin J. Chalut

  • Article
    | Open Access

    3D culture systems can provide critical insights into cellular behaviour. Here, the authors study the binding timescale of dynamic crosslinks and the conjugation stability of cell-adhesive ligands in cell–hydrogel network interactions to evaluate the impact on stem cell behaviour, mechanosensing and differentiation.

    • Boguang Yang
    • , Kongchang Wei
    •  & Liming Bian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cell based materials production has potential for generating diverse materials with a range of functions. Here, the authors report development of living fabrication of biohybrid semi interpenetrating polymer networks by encapsulating protein producing bacteria within polymer microcapsules.

    • Zhuojun Dai
    • , Xiaoyu Yang
    •  & Lingchong You

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current tissue engineering strategies lack materials that promote angiogenesis. Here the authors develop a microfluidic in vitro model in which chemokine-guided endothelial cell sprouting into a tunable hydrogel is followed by the formation of perfusable lumens to determine the material properties that regulate angiogenesis.

    • Jifeng Liu
    • , Hongyan Long
    •  & Britta Trappmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Macrophages perform diverse functions during immune responses, but the molecular mechanisms by which physical properties of the tissue regulate macrophage behavior remain unknown. Here the authors find that Piezo1 is a mechanosensor of stiffness, and that its activity modulates macrophage polarization responses.

    • Hamza Atcha
    • , Amit Jairaman
    •  & Wendy F. Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While rheology studies have contributed to the understanding of the viscoelastic properties of living cells, the use of higher frequencies promises elucidate the link between cellular and molecular properties. Here authors introduce a rheological assay that measures the cell mechanical response across a continuous frequency range ≈ 1 – 40 kHz.

    • Gotthold Fläschner
    • , Cosmin I. Roman
    •  & Daniel J. Müller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fabrication of dynamic, reversible and biocompatible scaffolds with non-invasive external triggers has so far been limited. Here, the authors report on the creation of 3D printed scaffolds with Janus structure that produce nanovibrations when exposed to ultrasound, promoting bone regeneration.

    • Sandra Camarero-Espinosa
    •  & Lorenzo Moroni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cell adhesion peptides like RGD are important to biomedical applications but suffer from proteolysis as well as processing and cost issues. Here, the authors report on the development of cationic-hydrophobic amphiphilic β-amino acid polymers which function as cell adhesion motifs but are resistant to proteolysis.

    • Qi Chen
    • , Donghui Zhang
    •  & Runhui Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    3D printing offers flexibility in fabrication of polymer objects but fabrication of large polymer structures with micrometer-sized geometrical features are challenging. Here, the authors introduce a method combining advantages of 3D printing and polymerization-induced phase separation, which enables formation of 3D polymer structures with controllable inherent porosity.

    • Zheqin Dong
    • , Haijun Cui
    •  & Pavel A. Levkin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The design principles underlying biomolecular phase separation of membrane-less organelles remain poorly understood. Using model homopolymers, Fisher et al. show that the formation kinetics of coexisting liquid phases can be tuned by exploiting differences between arginine and lysine residues.

    • Rachel S. Fisher
    •  & Shana Elbaum-Garfinkle

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biofilm formation is a major problem in indwelling medical devices. Here, the authors report on the development of a magnetically responsive micro pillar surface for the controlled prevention and removal of biofilms which also increased sensitivity to antibiotics.

    • Huan Gu
    • , Sang Won Lee
    •  & Dacheng Ren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The surface nanotopography of biomaterials direct cell behavior, but screening for desired effects is inefficient. Here, the authors introduce a platform that enables prediction of nanotopography-induced gene expression changes from changes in cell morphology, including in co-culture environments.

    • Marie F. A. Cutiongco
    • , Bjørn Sand Jensen
    •  & Nikolaj Gadegaard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assembling synthetic plant cell is difficult due to the presence of primary cell wall. Here, the authors describe the assembly of lipid-containing bodies that can be coated with cellulose and pectin, and show how these so-called plantosomes can be manipulated by changing surrounding milieu.

    • T. Paulraj
    • , S. Wennmalm
    •  & A. J. Svagan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Controlled patterning of functionality within hydrogels typically involves complex chemistry. Here, the authors report on a simple competitive binding strategy using avidin and biotin analogs in an injectable biomaterial for spatiotemporally controlled presentation of biochemical stimuli to cells.

    • Tom Kamperman
    • , Michelle Koerselman
    •  & Jeroen Leijten

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