Synthetic biology combines engineering and biology to produce artificial systems with programmable features. Specifically, engineered microenvironments have advanced immensely over the past few decades, owing in part to the merging of materials with biological mimetic structures. In this review, we adapt a traditional definition of community ecology to describe "cellular ecology", or the study of the distribution of cell populations and interactions within their microenvironment. We discuss two exemplar hydrogel platforms: (1) self-assembling peptide (SAP) hydrogels and (2) Poly(ethylene) glycol (PEG) hydrogels and describe future opportunities for merging smart material design and synthetic biology within the scope of multicellular platforms.

中文翻译：

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耦合合成生物学和可编程材料来构建复杂的组织生态系统

合成生物学将工程学和生物学结合起来，生产具有可编程功能的人工系统。具体而言，工程微环境在过去几十年中取得了巨大进步，部分原因是材料与生物模拟结构的融合。在这篇综述中，我们采用群落生态学的传统定义来描述“细胞生态学”，或对细胞群分布及其微环境内相互作用的研究。我们讨论了两个示例性水凝胶平台：（1）自组装肽（SAP）水凝胶和（2）聚乙二醇（PEG）水凝胶，并描述了在多细胞平台范围内融合智能材料设计和合成生物学的未来机会。