Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Origins of Life Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.
Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, United States.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jan 27;7:41534. doi: 10.1038/srep41534.
Giant micrometer sized vesicles are of obvious interest to the natural sciences as well as engineering, having potential application in fields ranging from drug delivery to synthetic biology. Their formation often requires elaborate experimental techniques and attempts to obtain giant vesicles from chemical media in a one-pot fashion have so far led to much smaller nanoscale structures. Here we show that a tailored medium undergoing controlled radical polymerization is capable of forming giant polymer vesicles. Using a protocol which allows for an aqueous reaction under mild conditions, we observe the macroscale consequences of amphiphilic polymer synthesis and the resulting molecular self-assembly using fluorescence microscopy. The polymerization process is photoinitiated by blue light granting complete control of the reaction, including on the microscope stage. The self-assembly process leads to giant vesicles with radii larger than 10 microns, exhibiting several emergent properties, including periodic growth and collapse as well as phototaxis.
巨微米尺寸的囊泡在自然科学和工程领域都具有明显的研究意义，在药物输送到合成生物学等领域都具有潜在的应用。它们的形成通常需要复杂的实验技术，而目前试图从化学介质中一锅法获得巨囊泡往往只能得到更小的纳米级结构。在这里，我们展示了经过精心设计的介质在可控自由基聚合的作用下能够形成聚合物巨囊泡。我们使用一种在温和条件下进行水相反应的方案，利用荧光显微镜观察到了两亲聚合物合成的宏观后果和由此产生的分子自组装。聚合过程通过蓝光引发的光引发自由基聚合来实现，从而完全控制反应，包括在显微镜载物台上的控制。自组装过程导致了直径大于 10 微米的聚合物巨囊泡的形成，表现出多种涌现特性，包括周期性的生长和收缩以及光趋性。
