Towards the Engineering of Chemical Communication Between Semi-Synthetic and Natural Cells

The recent advancements in semi-synthetic minimal cell (SSMC) technology pave the way for several interesting scenarios that span from basic scientific advancements to applications in biotechnology. In this short chapter we discuss the relevance of establishing chemical communication between synthetic and natural cells as an important conceptual issue and then discuss it as a new bio/chemical-information and communication technology. To this aim, the state of the art of SSMCs technology is shortly reviewed, and a possible experimental approach based on bacteria quorum sensing mechanisms is proposed and discussed.