Miele Ylenia, Jones Stephen J, Rossi Federico, Beales Paul A, Taylor Annette F
Department of Chemistry and Biology, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II 132, 84084 Fisciano, Salerno, Italy.
School of Chemistry and Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, U.K.
J Phys Chem Lett. 2022 Mar 3;13(8):1979-1984. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c00069. Epub 2022 Feb 21.
The transmission of chemical signals via an extracellular solution plays a vital role in collective behavior in cellular biological systems and may be exploited in applications of lipid vesicles such as drug delivery. Here, we investigated chemical communication in synthetic micro- and nanovesicles containing urease in a solution of urea and acid. We combined experiments with simulations to demonstrate that the fast transport of ammonia to the external solution governs the pH-time profile and synchronizes the timing of the pH clock reaction in a heterogeneous population of vesicles. This study shows how the rate of production and emission of a small basic product controls pH changes in active vesicles with a distribution of sizes and enzyme amounts, which may be useful in bioreactor or healthcare applications.
通过细胞外溶液进行化学信号传递在细胞生物系统的集体行为中起着至关重要的作用，并且可能在脂质囊泡的应用（如药物递送）中得到利用。在此，我们研究了在尿素和酸溶液中含有脲酶的合成微囊泡和纳米囊泡中的化学通讯。我们将实验与模拟相结合，以证明氨向外部溶液的快速运输控制着pH-时间曲线，并使异质囊泡群体中pH时钟反应的时间同步。这项研究表明，一种小的碱性产物的产生和释放速率如何控制具有不同大小和酶量分布的活性囊泡中的pH变化，这可能在生物反应器或医疗保健应用中有用。
