Journal
NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 15, Issue 11, Pages 914-+Publisher
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/s41565-020-0761-y
Keywords
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Funding
- European Research Council [677960, 694424]
- DFG Cluster of Excellence livMatS Living, Adaptive and Energy-Autonomous Materials Systems
- NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
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For life to emerge, the confinement of catalytic reactions within protocellular environments has been proposed to be a decisive aspect to regulate chemical activity in space(1). Today, cells and organisms adapt to signals(2-6)by processing them through reaction networks that ultimately provide downstream functional responses and structural morphogenesis(7,8). Re-enacting such signal processing in de novo-designed protocells is a profound challenge, but of high importance for understanding the design of adaptive systems with life-like traits. We report on engineered all-DNA protocells(9)harbouring an artificial metalloenzyme(10)whose olefin metathesis activity leads to downstream morphogenetic protocellular responses with varying levels of complexity. The artificial metalloenzyme catalyses the uncaging of a pro-fluorescent signal molecule that generates a self-reporting fluorescent metabolite designed to weaken DNA duplex interactions. This leads to pronounced growth, intraparticular functional adaptation in the presence of a fluorescent DNA mechanosensor(11)or interparticle protocell fusion. Such processes mimic chemically transduced processes found in cell adaptation and cell-to-cell adhesion. Our concept showcases new opportunities to study life-like behaviour via abiotic bioorthogonal chemical and mechanical transformations in synthetic protocells. Furthermore, it reveals a strategy for inducing complex behaviour in adaptive and communicating soft-matter microsystems, and it illustrates how dynamic properties can be upregulated and sustained in micro-compartmentalized media. Genetically improved artificial metalloenzymes in DNA protocells convert signalling molecules into DNA-interacting metabolites that induce downstream growth, functional adaptation and fusion processes inside protocells and between protocells.
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