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Guo H, Ryan JC, Song X, Mallet A, Zhang M, Pabst V, Decrulle AL, Ejsmont P, Wintermute EH, Lindner AB. Spatial engineering of E. coli with addressable phase-separated RNAs. Cell 2022; 185:3823-3837.e23. [PMID: 36179672 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.09.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/21/2020] [Revised: 04/25/2022] [Accepted: 09/06/2022] [Indexed: 01/26/2023]
Abstract
Biochemical processes often require spatial regulation and specific microenvironments. The general lack of organelles in bacteria limits the potential of bioengineering complex intracellular reactions. Here, we demonstrate synthetic membraneless organelles in Escherichia coli termed transcriptionally engineered addressable RNA solvent droplets (TEARS). TEARS are assembled from RNA-binding protein recruiting domains fused to poly-CAG repeats that spontaneously drive liquid-liquid phase separation from the bulk cytoplasm. Targeting TEARS with fluorescent proteins revealed multilayered structures with composition and reaction robustness governed by non-equilibrium dynamics. We show that TEARS provide organelle-like bioprocess isolation for sequestering biochemical pathways, controlling metabolic branch points, buffering mRNA translation rates, and scaffolding protein-protein interactions. We anticipate TEARS to be a simple and versatile tool for spatially controlling E. coli biochemistry. Particularly, the modular design of TEARS enables applications without expression fine-tuning, simplifying the design-build-test cycle of bioengineering.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haotian Guo
- Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), 75006 Paris, France.
| | - Joseph C Ryan
- Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), 75006 Paris, France
| | - Xiaohu Song
- Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), 75006 Paris, France
| | - Adeline Mallet
- Ultrastructural BioImaging UTechS, C2RT, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue du Dr Roux, 75015 Paris, France
| | - Mengmeng Zhang
- Institute of Synthetic Biology, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Science, Shenzhen, China
| | - Victor Pabst
- Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), 75006 Paris, France
| | - Antoine L Decrulle
- Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), 75006 Paris, France
| | - Paulina Ejsmont
- Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), 75006 Paris, France
| | - Edwin H Wintermute
- Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), 75006 Paris, France
| | - Ariel B Lindner
- Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), 75006 Paris, France.
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