Mishra Ananya, Taylor Hannah, Patil Avinash J, Mann Stephen
Centre for Protolife Research and Centre for Organized Matter Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TS, United Kingdom.
Max Planck-Bristol Centre for Minimal Biology, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TS, United Kingdom.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2025 Feb 10;64(7):e202420209. doi: 10.1002/anie.202420209. Epub 2025 Jan 13.
The design and implementation of collective actions in model protocell communities is an on-going challenge in synthetic protobiology. Herein, we covalently graft alginate or chitosan onto the outer surface of semipermeable enzyme-containing silica colloidosomes to produce hairy catalytic protocells with pH-switchable membrane surface charge. Binary populations of the enzymatically active protocells exhibit self-initiated stimulus-responsive changes in spatial organization such that the mixed community undergoes alternative modes of electrostatically induced self-sorting and reversible co-clustering. We demonstrate that co-clustering, but not self-sorting, mitigates signal attenuation in a binary community of enzyme-containing sender and receiver protocells due to increased proximity effects. The level of signal attenuation is correlated with a time-dependent pH-mediated switch in the spatial organization of the sender and receiver populations. Our results pave the way towards the development of programmable networks of adaptive life-like objects and could have implications for the development of interactive cytomimetic materials and agent-based robotics.
在模型原始细胞群落中设计和实施集体行动是合成原始生物学中一项持续存在的挑战。在此，我们将藻酸盐或壳聚糖共价接枝到含酶半透性二氧化硅胶体囊泡的外表面，以制备具有pH可切换膜表面电荷的多毛催化原始细胞。具有酶活性的原始细胞二元群体在空间组织上表现出自发的刺激响应变化，使得混合群落经历静电诱导的自分选和可逆共聚集的交替模式。我们证明，由于邻近效应增加，共聚集而非自分选减轻了含酶发送者和接收者原始细胞二元群落中的信号衰减。信号衰减水平与发送者和接收者群体空间组织中时间依赖性pH介导的切换相关。我们的结果为开发可编程的适应性类生命物体网络铺平了道路，并可能对交互式细胞模拟材料和基于智能体的机器人技术的发展产生影响。
