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Engineering native biological complexity from the inside–out and outside–in

Nature Chemical Engineering volume 1, pages 2–5 (2024)Cite this article

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The balance of ‘outside–in’ and ‘inside–out’ signaling is critical in tissue development and regeneration. This Comment highlights emerging strategies to engineer and manipulate this delicate equilibrium and fine-tune cellular responses using complementary tools in biomaterials design and synthetic biology.

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Fig. 1: Engineering cell fate via inside–out and outside–in methods.
Fig. 2: Engineering synthetic tissue.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the grants from the National Institutes of Health, Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (R35GM138036, C.A.D.) and R01 (DE016523 and DK12092, K.S.A.), the National Science Foundation (RECODE 2033723, K.S.A.), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (W911NF-19-2-004, K.S.A. and B.E.K.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Cole A. DeForest

  2. Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Cole A. DeForest

  3. Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Cole A. DeForest

  4. Institute of Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Cole A. DeForest

  5. Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Cole A. DeForest

  6. Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Cole A. DeForest

  7. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Bruce E. Kirkpatrick & Kristi S. Anseth

  8. The BioFrontiers Institute, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Bruce E. Kirkpatrick & Kristi S. Anseth

  9. Medical Scientist Training Program, School of Medicine, University of Colorado, Aurora, CO, USA

    Bruce E. Kirkpatrick

  10. Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Kristi S. Anseth

Authors
  1. Cole A. DeForest
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  2. Bruce E. Kirkpatrick
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  3. Kristi S. Anseth
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the initial writing and subsequent editing of this manuscript. C.A.D. prepared the figures with input from B.E.K. and K.S.A.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Cole A. DeForest or Kristi S. Anseth.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Chemical Engineering thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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DeForest, C.A., Kirkpatrick, B.E. & Anseth, K.S. Engineering native biological complexity from the inside–out and outside–in. Nat Chem Eng 1, 2–5 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44286-023-00013-1

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