Volume 61, Issue 1 e202111647
Research Article
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A Biomimetic Approach for Spatially Controlled Cell Membrane Engineering Using Fusogenic Spherical Nucleic Acid

Minjie Lin

Minjie Lin

Institute of Chemical Biology and Nanomedicine, State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomacromolecular Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082 China

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Yuanyuan Chen

Yuanyuan Chen

Institute of Chemical Biology and Nanomedicine, State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomacromolecular Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082 China

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Sisi Zhao

Sisi Zhao

Institute of Chemical Biology and Nanomedicine, College of Biology, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082 China

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Rui Tang

Rui Tang

Institute of Chemical Biology and Nanomedicine, State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomacromolecular Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082 China

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Prof. Dr. Zhou Nie

Prof. Dr. Zhou Nie

Institute of Chemical Biology and Nanomedicine, State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomacromolecular Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082 China

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Prof. Dr. Hang Xing

Corresponding Author

Prof. Dr. Hang Xing

Institute of Chemical Biology and Nanomedicine, State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomacromolecular Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082 China

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First published: 12 October 2021
Citations: 45

Graphical Abstract

Inspired by the natural extracellular vesicle-cell fusion process, we introduced the fusogenic spherical nucleic acid (fuso-SNA) to achieve spatially controlled cell membrane engineering with DNA by using a liposome fusion-based transport (LiFT) approach. We demonstrated asymmetric DNA modifications on the cell membrane with orthogonal functionalities on each side, realizing applications such as heterotypic cell assembly and intracellular metabolites detection.

Abstract

Engineering of the cell plasma membrane using functional DNA is important for studying and controlling cellular behaviors. However, most efforts to apply artificial DNA interactions on cells are limited to external membrane surface due to the lack of suitable synthetic tools to engineer the intracellular side, which impedes many applications in cell biology. Inspired by the natural extracellular vesicle-cell fusion process, we have developed a fusogenic spherical nucleic acid construct to realize robust DNA functionalization on both external and internal cell surfaces via liposome fusion-based transport (LiFT) strategy, which enables applications including the construction of heterotypic cell assembly for programmed signaling pathway and detection of intracellular metabolites. This approach can engineer cell membranes in a highly efficient and spatially controlled manner, allowing one to build anisotropic membrane structures with two orthogonal DNA functionalities.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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