Fig. 3: Activation of fungal cells using light-producing synthetic cells.
From: Synthetic cells with self-activating optogenetic proteins communicate with natural cells
a Illustration of the experimental setup for photo-activation of conidiation in Trichoderma atroviride with Gaussia luciferase (Gluc)-expressing synthetic cells. b (i) Representative images of Trichoderma atroviride plates after exposure to Gluc-expressing synthetic cells or synthetic cells without DNA. (ii) A magnified image and a (iii) black and white thresholded image of the plate area marked with a white rectangle in which the synthetic cells were localized. c Quantitative analysis of the sporulated area out of the total area exposed to synthetic cells. Horizontal lines indicate median values; boxes indicate quartiles 1 and 3; whiskers indicate the min and max values (n = 5 independent samples). Welch’s two-tailed t-test P value; *p=0.0103. d The effect of varying synthetic cell concentrations on photo-activation of conidiation in Trichoderma atroviride. Data is expressed as a mean ± s.e.m. (n = 5 independent samples for 420,000 synthetic cells ml-1, n = 3 independent samples for all other synthetic cell concentrations). Welch’s two-tailed t-test P-values; *p = 0.01, ***p = 0.0009, **p = 0.0098, **p = 0.0026, **p = 0.0095, **p = 0.0045, for comparisons of 420,000 and 84,000 synthetic cells ml-1 vs. 42,000, 8400 and 4200 synthetic cells ml-1, respectively. e A light dose-response calibration curve was generated in Trichoderma atroviride using a blue LED (black circles). A Michaelis-Menten curve was fitted to the data (dotted pink line, R2=0.9582) and the total light dose of the synthetic cell treatment was calculated according to the fitted model (pink square). Data is expressed as mean ± standard deviation (n = 2 independent samples for light doses of 20, 1000, 2000 μE m-2 and the synthetic cells samples, n = 3 independent samples for all other light doses). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
