Research profile

Inspired by nature, researchers aim to create complex and multi-functional systems that possess life-like properties, such as compartmentalization and metabolism. However, mimicking cellular motility has been much less explored in the artificial cell field, which might be caused by the lack of structural similarities between artificial and natural cells. Besides, the incorporation of motion dynamics in artificial cells is challenging. In my work, the general aim is to design a novel engineered artificial cell platform, which contains motile and adaptive life-like features. The artificial cell platform that is utilized is based on coacervates, where the inside of the coacervate is densely crowded due to the liquid-liquid phase separation of charged amylose biopolymers. This phase separated droplet is then stabilized with a polymer membrane. An interesting feature of this polymer membrane is the fluidity of the polymer units within the membrane at room temperature. It was shown that surface-attached enzymes possess a high lateral mobility and position themselves stochastically in time and space. This stochasticity imparts transient asymmetry, which can cause motion of the artificial cells in the presence of substrate.

In my work, I aim to explore this asymmetry without solely relying on the stochastics of the system, by making an asymmetric network of DNA origami and DNA fibers around the coacervate. In this system, the DNA constructs are positioned at the interface of the coacervate droplet and functionalized with propulsive enzymes.

Academic background

Ir. Lou M.V. Raeven (1999) was born in Maastricht, NL, and grew up in the breathtaking South-Limburg region. In 2020, he received his BSc degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Afterwards, he went on to study MSc Chemical Biology at Eindhoven University of Technology. During his master’s thesis in the lab of Prof. Jan van Hest he worked on the formation of an artificial receptor-mediated signaling system within the coacervate-based artificial cells, after which he successfully defended his thesis in June 2022. Thereafter, he started an internship in the group of Prof. Alexander Zelikin at Aarhus University (Denmark) in August 2022, where he worked on synthetic zymogens, which are enzymes that can be blocked with a synthetic fuse group and subsequently reactivated.
After graduating in March 2023, he joined the van Hest lab as a PhD candidate in May 2023 to work on motile artificial cells. Lou’s current research interests include artificial cells, DNA origami, enzyme kinetics, microscopy and motility.

“Gaining a deeper understanding of how artificial cells can have motile behavior and having control on this motility would be a great achievement in the field of synthetic biology”

Collaborations

Internal:

Patricia Dankers (Biomedical Materials); https://www.dankerslab.nl/