Self-reproduction as an autonomous process of growth and reorganization in fully abiotic, artificial and synthetic cells.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 40424147.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1073/pnas.2412514122 and PMC identifier 12146737.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
We investigate mechanisms for the observed nonlinear growth in the number of polymer vesicles generated during a photo-Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain Transfer-based polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) reaction. Our experimental results reveal the presence of a self-reproduction process during which chemically active polymer protocells are chemically and autonomously generated in a light-stimulated one-pot reaction that starts from a homogeneous blend of non-self-assembling molecules and which, as observed microscopically, form vesicular objects that grow and multiply (reproduce) during irradiation with green light (530 nm) as the reaction proceeds. By using a filtration-based protocol, our experiments demonstrate that the self-reproduction process occurs concomitantly with the PISA process and results in a nonlinear increase in the number of polymer vesicles during photopolymerization which can only be ascribed to their reproduction via polymeric spores ejected from previously existing first-generation vesicles. The second and subsequent generations' vesicles also self-reproduce and continue the process of population growth.