Microfluidic Assembly of Synthetic Tissues from Synthetic Cells

Adhesion-mediated packing of liposome-based synthetic cells in a freestanding monolayer causes significant deformation, shifting circularity and eccentricity to quantify microscale-to-macroscale mechanics.

• Why it matters: Local adhesion and rearrangement are known in biology, but linking those interactions to tissue-scale mechanics is hard in living systems; minimal synthetic models isolate physical principles.
• What they did: The team optimized a solvent-mediated dewetting method for high-throughput assembly, then built freestanding monolayers and confined microfluidic tissues to measure morphology and transport.
• The result: In confined microfluidic assemblies, adhesive tissue formation reduces transport rates by decreasing pore size and increasing pathway tortuosity while maintaining mechanical stability under flow.

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