Careers

Project description:

Living cells reorganise their membranes in response to spatially localised cues: a signal at one point of the cell surface can trigger endocytosis or division there, while the rest of the membrane stays unperturbed. Reproducing this locally addressable behaviour in a fully synthetic system is a key challenge for building life-like, adaptive materials from the bottom up.

Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs, 10-100 µm synthetic cells) already allow photoswitchable control of membrane area1, driving uptake or release of biomolecular condensates or triggering fission of dumbbell-shaped vesicles into daughter compartments. In all cases, however, the whole GUV is illuminated uniformly and/or the membrane responds globally, and the location of deformation is set only by the pre-existing vesicle geometry, not by the light itself.

In this project, we will move from global to locally addressed photoactuation of synthetic cells, using patterned light (generated by a spatial light modulator) to confine irradiation to a defined micron-scale region of a single vesicle (e.g. one lobe of a dumbbell-shaped GUV), or the vicinity of a single condensate droplet among several at the same vesicle. We will find out how such patterned illumination locally changes soluble photoswitch partitioning, conformation and membrane curvature only in the irradiated area, and use this to (i) trigger on-demand, directionally controlled protrusions and division of synthetic cells, and (ii) selectively drive engulfment or expulsion of individual condensates. The outcome will be a synthetic membrane platform in which division and endocytosis-like uptake can be triggered on demand, at a chosen location and time, i.e. a step toward synthetic cells that can be optically programmed to reproduce or release cargo, with potential applications in bottom-up synthetic biology and
light-triggered drug delivery.

Project in collaboration with: Svetlana Santer, Univ. of Potsdam.

Deadline for application: 15 September 2026