Life exists out of equilibrium. It converts high-energy resources (like light or food) into waste and uses that energy to fight the constant battle with entropy.
The BoekhovenLab identified that if we want to make Life, we first need to develop similar methods to use the energy from light or reagents to organize molecules. So, chemically fueled self-assembly was born.
We introduced the notion of regulating molecular self-assembly with chemical energy, just like biology does with fuels like ATP. We introduced the immensely popular carbodiimide-fueled reaction cycle that is now widely used by scientists around the globe (see a database here). We discovered completely new molecular architectures that can only exist when consuming chemical fuel. We developed new ways of making compartments competing for energy, just like life does. We also found materials with completely unique properties.
When we couple chemically fueled self-assembly to compartment formation. Chemically fueled synthetic cells emerge. Those are droplets or vesicles of a few micrometers that protect the molecules they contain from the outside, similar to how a cell protects its inside chemistry from the outside. Due to their chemically fueled nature, these compartments spontaneously emerge in response to chemical energy, they keep themselves “alive” by continuously making their own building blocks, and, if one stops feeding them, they will decompose. These compartments start to display some of the hallmarks of life!
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