| dc.description.abstract | Artificial cells are built to mimic the characteristics of biological cells. They are applied in different fields of bionanotechnology and can be used to study fundamental problems in cell biology and early evolution. I applied a bottom-up engineering approach to build phospholipid-based model artificial cell compartments to study potential collective behavior among primitive cell compartments. In order to generate the lipid compartments, I employed continuous Droplet Interface Crossing Encapsulation (cDICE), a microfluidics-based technique known for generating giant lipid vesicles with efficient encapsulation of macromolecules with high-throughput. A key part of my thesis was encapsulating a synthetic thermoresponsive polymer inside these lipid compartments, Poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm), to study intra- and intercellular response of the vesicles containing the polymer in an environment with altering temperatures. The thermal stimulus was applied via an IR-Blaser to create a localized temperature gradient. Thermal manipulation of vesicle populations, both with and without PNIPAAm, induced their self-organization into dynamic clusters. PNIPAAm prolonged the adhesion between the vesicles in the clusters. | eng |