Recreating the structure and functions of living tissues is one of the grand challenges of our time. One way to overcome this challenge is by relying on synthetic cells (or “protocells”) as foundational units to build free-standing structures with complex three-dimensional architectures that we call “protocellular materials” (PCMs). In this seminar I will give a brief introduction of this young and emerging research field and report our most recent scientific breakthroughs. These were achieved by combining in an original and synergistic manner key aspects of organic chemistry and materials science with fundamental concepts of bottom-up synthetic biology. I will describe our techniques to generate protocell-protocell adhesions and control the assembly of protocell building blocks into PCMs with complex three-dimensional architectures. Finally, I will explain how we can chemically program the PCMs to display emergent bio-inspired behaviours such as collective contractility, non-equilibrium sensing and photoinduced O2 production.
