Synthetic reaction-diffusion patterning in mammalian cells

Synthetic LALI reaction-diffusion circuits in mammalian cells generate spatial patterns with distinct characteristic spatial scales, including BMP4 acting as either short-range activator or long-range inhibitor.

• Why it matters: Natural patterning systems entangle regulation with transport, leaving uncertainty about minimal LALI circuits in mammalian cells and whether regulation and transport can be controlled independently in a modular way.
• What they did: The authors engineered LALI circuits using BMP, Activin, and the SNIPR pathway, using model-guided design to reassign morphogens and tune whether BMP4 functions as short-range activation or long-range inhibition.
• The result: Gene expression noise degraded long-range order but preserved the dominant local spatial scale, enabling a modular, extensible framework for engineered patterning in mammalian cells.

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