Mechanobiology and Synthetic Cells: Understanding and Engineering Adaptive Cellular Systems

Abstract:
Biological cells and synthetic cell-like systems both rely on dynamic membranes, molecular organization, and mechanical interactions with their surroundings to sense, respond, and adapt. In this seminar, I will discuss our lab’s efforts to understand and engineer these behaviors across living and synthetic systems. The first part of the talk will focus on cellular mechanobiology, with an emphasis on cellular unjamming in three-dimensional environments. While unjamming transitions have been widely studied in collective cell migration and tissue remodeling, their regulation in 3D remains less understood. I will describe our work investigating how cells transition between solid-like and fluid-like collective behaviors in physiologically relevant environments, and how these transitions are coupled to cell-generated forces, matrix interactions, and multicellular organization.

The second part of the talk will shift toward bottom-up synthetic biology and the construction of synthetic cells that can sense and respond to environmental cues. I will present our work developing pH-sensing synthetic cells, designed to detect chemical changes in their surroundings and produce measurable biochemical or physical responses. I will also discuss our efforts to engineer desiccation-resistant synthetic cells, motivated by the need to create robust cell-like systems that can survive extreme or fluctuating environmental conditions. Together, these projects highlight how principles from cell mechanobiology, membrane biophysics, and synthetic biology can be integrated to understand the design rules of living systems and to build programmable, resilient cellular mimics.
Bio:
Allen Liu received a B.Sc. with Honors in Biochemistry from the University of British Columbia in 2001 and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007, followed by postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. He established his research group in 2012 and is currently Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Biophysics, as well as Associate Chair for Graduate Education in Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Michigan.

His research focuses on cellular mechanotransduction and bottom-up synthetic biology, integrating approaches from quantitative cell biology, synthetic biology, biophysics, and microfluidics. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and delivered more than 100 invited presentations. His honors include the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award; recognition as a Young Innovator by Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering and as a Rising Star by the Biomedical Engineering Society; and selection as a Future of Biophysics speaker at a Burroughs Wellcome Fund symposium at the Biophysical Society Meeting. He is an elected Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and a recipient of the Endeavour Executive Fellowship in Australia and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers in Germany.