Look at our new fuel-dependent droplets!
They emerge, grow, eat their neighbors, produce some offspring, and decay. All in 15 minutes!
Why?
Our goal is to build life.
Life from the bottom up, to better understand, what is life?
Paper here:
https://t.co/PfgEY8zrbD
Look at our new fuel-dependent droplets!
They emerge, grow, eat their neighbors, produce some offspring, and decay. All in 15 minutes!
Why?
Our goal is to build life.
Life from the bottom up, to better understand, what is life?
Paper here:
https://t.co/PfgEY8zrbD
In biology, this coupling allows chemical energy to be rectified into directional processes like transport and pumping
By engineering similar kinetic asymmetries into simple synthetic systems, we hope to move toward chemically fueled molecular machinery!
Life continuously consumes energy to keep structure and function.
But can similar behavior emerge in simpler chemical systems, w/o enzymes?
In our work in @J_A_C_S, we test enzyme-free phosphorylation cycle that dynamically regulates peptide assembly
https://t.co/6V6P2FW2dr
5/ Our long-term goal is not simply to create dynamic assemblies.
We want to develop synthetic systems that can perform work
For molecular motors and pumps, energy consumption alone is not enough:
the reaction kinetics must be coupled to the supramolecular state of the system.
We found that fuel-driven droplets can prevent such autocatalytic fibers forming-when the peptide is turned over into phase-separate into droplets, we did not observe any plaques. This suggests that transiently capturing the peptides inside droplets prevents fiber formation.
Our droplets are a model for the biomolecular condensates in our cells. Does turning over such condensates prevent aging of peptides in our cells too? It is too early to tell.
Besides, others have shown the opposite: droplets accelerate fibrillation.
https://t.co/yCClUFwWmm
We found a peptide that forms amyloid fibers—the types associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Although the exact pathway is unknown, a complication is that these fibers grow autocatalytically—once a fiber is formed, it helps form new ones.
https://t.co/fKPDORCSyl
We also have to show that genes compete (through the synthetic cells). For that, we need multiple (hundreds?) replicators combined to form a real genotype.
So, plenty of work to do.