Phage-mediated intercellular CRISPRi for biocomputation in bacterial consortia.

ABSTRACT: Coordinated actions of cells in microbial communities and multicellular organisms enable them to perform complex tasks otherwise difficult for single cells. This has inspired biological engineers to build cellular consortia for larger circuits with improved functionalities while implementing communication systems for coordination among cells. Here, we investigate the signalling dynamics of a phage-mediated synthetic DNA messaging system and couple it with CRISPR interference to build distributed circuits that perform logic gate operations in multicellular bacterial consortia. We find that growth phases of both sender and receiver cells, as well as resource competition between them, shape communication outcomes. Leveraging the easy programmability of DNA messages, we build eight orthogonal

SUBMITTER: Pujar A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11797038 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature