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Abstract

A grand challenge in bottom–up synthetic biology is the designand construction of synthetic multicellular systems usingnonliving molecular components. Abstracting key features ofcompartmentalisation, reaction and diffusion, and communica-tion provides the blueprint for assembling synthetic multiscalesystems with emergent properties. The diverse range of chem-istries for building encapsulated reactions in micron-sized com-partments offers combinatorial flexibility and modularity inbuilding synthetic multicellular systems with molecular-levelcontrol. Here, we focus onrecent advancesin the emergingareaof bottom–up approaches to create biologically inspired multi-cellular systems. Specifically, we consider how intercellularcommunication and feedback loops can be integrated intopopulations of synthetic cells and summarise recent de-velopments for the 2D/3D spatial localisation of microcompart-ments. Although building bottom–upmulticellular systems isstillin its infancy, progress in this field offers tractable models to un-derstand the minimal requirements for generating multiscalesystems from the molecular level for fundamental research andinnovative technological applications.