期刊
NATURE CHEMISTRY
卷 3, 期 9, 页码 720-724出版社
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.1110
关键词
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资金
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/H029230/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- EPSRC [EP/H029230/1] Funding Source: UKRI
Although phospholipid bilayers are ubiquitous in modern cells, their impermeability, lack of dynamic properties, and synthetic complexity are difficult to reconcile with plausible pathways of proto-metabolism, growth and division. Here, we present an alternative membrane-free model, which demonstrates that low-molecular-weight mononucleotides and simple cationic peptides spontaneously accumulate in water into microdroplets that are stable to changes in temperature and salt concentration, undergo pH-induced cycles of growth and decay, and promote alpha-helical peptide secondary structure. Moreover, the microdroplets selectively sequester porphyrins, inorganic nanoparticles and enzymes to generate supramolecular stacked arrays of light-harvesting molecules, nanoparticle-mediated oxidase activity, and enhanced rates of glucose phosphorylation, respectively. Taken together, our results suggest that peptide-nucleotide microdroplets can be considered as a new type of protocell model that could be used to develop novel bioreactors, primitive artificial cells and plausible pathways to prebiotic organization before the emergence of lipid-based compartmentalization on the early Earth.
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