National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-2-1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0047, Japan.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8577, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2017 May 25;7(1):2425. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-02524-3.
Despite substantial effort devoted in the history of supramolecular chemistry, synthetic supramolecular systems still lag behind biomolecular systems in terms of complexity and functionality. This is because biomolecular systems function in a multicomponent molecular network under out-of-equilibrium conditions. Here we report two-component supramolecular assemblies that are metastable and thus show time-dependent evolution. We found that the systems undergo either self-sorting or coassembly in time depending on the combination of components. Interestingly, this outcome, which had been previously achievable only under specific conditions, emerged from the two-component systems as a result of synergistic or reciprocal interplay between the coupled equilibria. We believe that this study sheds light on the similarity between synthetic and biomolecular systems and promotes better understanding of their intricate kinetic behaviors.
尽管在超分子化学的历史上已经付出了大量的努力，但在复杂性和功能性方面，合成超分子体系仍然落后于生物分子体系。这是因为生物分子体系在非平衡条件下的多组分分子网络中发挥作用。在这里，我们报告了两种组分的超分子组装体，它们是亚稳态的，因此表现出时间依赖性的演变。我们发现，根据组分的组合，系统会随着时间的推移而发生自分类或共组装。有趣的是，这种以前只能在特定条件下实现的结果，是由于耦合平衡之间的协同或相互作用，从两个组分系统中产生的。我们相信，这项研究揭示了合成和生物分子体系之间的相似性，并促进了对它们复杂动力学行为的更好理解。
