Multicellular organisms originate from a single cell, ultimately giving rise to mature organisms of heterogeneous cell type composition in complex structures. Recent work in the areas of stem cell biology and tissue engineering has laid major groundwork in the ability to convert certain types of cells into other types, but there has been limited progress in the ability to control the morphology of cellular masses as they grow. Contemporary approaches to this problem have included the use of artificial scaffolds, 3D bioprinting, and complex media formulations; however, there are no existing approaches to controlling this process purely through genetics and from a single-cell starting point. Here we describe a computer-aided design approach, called CellArchitect, for designing recombinase-based genetic circuits for controlling the formation of multicellular masses into arbitrary shapes in human cells.
Keywords: computer-aided design; developmental biology; multicellular structures; synthetic biology.