Synthetic multicellular (MC) systems have the capacity to increase our understanding of biofilms and higher organisms, and to serve as engineering platforms for developing complex products in the areas of medicine, biosynthesis and smart materials. Here we provide an interdisciplinary perspective and review on emerging approaches to engineer and model MC systems. We lay out definitions for key terms in the field and identify toolboxes of standardized parts which can be combined into various MC algorithms to achieve specific outcomes. Many essential parts and algorithms have been demonstrated in some form. As key next milestones for the field, we foresee the improvement of these parts and their adaptation to more biological systems, the demonstration of more complex algorithms, the advancement of quantitative modeling approaches and compilers to support rational MC engineering, and implementation of MC engineering for practical applications.

中文翻译：

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多细胞形态和模式的工程和建模。

合成多细胞 (MC) 系统有能力增加我们对生物膜和高等生物的理解，并作为开发医学、生物合成和智能材料领域复杂产品的工程平台。在这里，我们提供了一个跨学科的视角，并回顾了对 MC 系统进行设计和建模的新兴方法。我们列出了该领域关键术语的定义，并确定了标准化部件的工具箱，这些工具箱可以组合到各种 MC 算法中以实现特定结果。许多基本部分和算法已经以某种形式进行了演示。作为该领域的下一个关键里程碑，我们预见到这些部分的改进及其对更多生物系统的适应，更复杂算法的演示，