Angelini Lab Wins NSF Trailblazer Award

We are thrilled to begin work with our colleagues on this project, titled, "TRAILBLAZER: Bringing the Solid State to Life with Cell Crystals to Transform Biosensing in Environmental, Health Care, and National Security Applications." In this work, we will integrate programmed cell communication with cell positioning on lattices to drive the emergence of spatiotemporally patterned and highly controlled collective biological states. Solid state devices have transformed life on earth over the past several decades. The materials these devices are based on – semiconductors, magnets, and light-emitting diodes, for example – are made by arranging specific atoms into specific crystal structures, yet their constituent atoms, alone, do not have the properties of their assemblies. Inspired by the stability and predictability of solid-state materials, we formulated a structure-function hypothesis that guides our plans to develop cell-based biotechnologies. We expect coherent, spatiotemporally patterned, and highly controlled collective biological states to emerge upon integrating programmed cell communication with cell positioning on lattices; emergent collective states can be designed by matching cell programming to cell assembly. Crystallinity has not yet been leveraged to control collective cell behavior, which we believe can be used to create new biological states though the careful integration of top-down structural control with bottom-up cell-engineering. Stay tuned!