Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Institut Charles Sadron (UPR22), 23 rue du Loess, BP 84047, 67034, Strasbourg Cedex 2, France.
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, INSERM Unité 1121, 11 rue Humann, 67085, Strasbourg Cedex, France.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2020 Aug 17;59(34):14558-14563. doi: 10.1002/anie.202005377. Epub 2020 Jul 7.
Autocatalysis and self-assembly are key processes in developmental biology and are involved in the emergence of life. In the last decade both of these features were extensively investigated by chemists with the final goal to design synthetic living systems. Herein, we describe the autonomous growth of a self-assembled soft material, that is, a supramolecular hydrogel, able to sustain its own formation through an autocatalytic mechanism that is not based on any template effect and emerges from a peptide (hydrogelator) self-assembly. A domino sequence of events starts from an enzymatically triggered peptide generation followed by self-assembly into catalytic nanofibers that induce and amplify their production over time, resulting in a 3D hydrogel network. A cascade is initiated by traces (10 m) of a trigger enzyme, which can be localized allowing for a spatial resolution of this autocatalytic buildup of hydrogel growth, an essential condition on the route towards further cell-mimic designs.
自催化和自组装是发育生物学中的关键过程，涉及生命的出现。在过去的十年中，化学家们广泛研究了这两个特征，最终目标是设计合成的生命系统。在这里，我们描述了一种自组装软物质（即超分子水凝胶）的自主生长，该水凝胶能够通过不基于任何模板效应的自催化机制维持自身的形成，该机制源自肽（水凝胶形成剂）的自组装。一系列级联事件始于酶触发的肽生成，随后自组装成催化纳米纤维，随着时间的推移诱导和放大其生成，从而形成 3D 水凝胶网络。由触发酶的微量（10 μM）引发级联反应，可以对其进行定位，从而实现水凝胶生长的自催化构建的空间分辨率，这是进一步模拟细胞设计的重要条件。
