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Orchestrating Self-Replication in Artificial Cells through Digital Microfluidics

Zhai, G.; Dimitriou, P.; Sengel, J. T.; Wallace, M. I.

2025-05-23 synthetic biology
10.1101/2025.05.23.655734 bioRxiv
Show abstract

A defining feature of living cells is their ability to self-replicate; but creating artificial cells with this capability remains challenging, due to the complexity of biological division machinery. Rather than seeking to reconstitute this machinery, here we take direct control of DNA replication and compartment division using digital microfluidics. This approach allows us to precisely orchestrate these two fundamental processes, providing insight into how they must be coupled for successful self-replication. Our system achieves autonomous cycles of replication and division, with daughter compartments inheriting parental DNA and maintaining genetic continuity across multiple generations - a key feature of living systems that has been di!cult to achieve in artificial cells. By implementing these processes through direct physical manipulation rather than biochemical complexity, we provide a simple testbed that will help to disentangle the essential requirements for self-replicating systems.

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"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.