Emergent chemical behavior in variable-volume protocells
| Autor: | Ricard V. Solé, Ben Shirt-Ediss, Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo |
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| Přispěvatelé: | Fundación Botín, Santa Fe Institute (US), Eusko Jaurlaritza, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), European Commission |
| Předmět: |
Protocell
Osmosis Chemical reactor Bistability bistability Semi-permeable compartments Water flow Chemical reactors Diffusion semi-permeable compartments Bioinformatics General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology Article osmotic coupling Systems chemistry Kinetics (MAK) lcsh:Science Compartment (pharmacokinetics) Variable solvent volume Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics continuous-flow stirred tank reactor (CSTR) Chemistry osmosis variable solvent volume mass action kinetics (MAK) chemical reactor systems chemistry Vesicle Paleontology Osmosi Osmotic coupling Space and Planetary Science Chemical physics Continuous-flow stirred tank reactor (CSTR) Mass action lcsh:Q |
| Zdroj: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya instname Life; Volume 5; Issue 1; Pages: 181-211 Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación Life Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC Life, Vol 5, Iss 1, Pp 181-211 (2015) |
| Popis: | Supplementary materials can be accessed here.-- This article belongs to the Special Issue Protocells - Designs for Life.-- This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, istribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Artificial protocellular compartments and lipid vesicles have been used as model systems to understand the origins and requirements for early cells, as well as to design encapsulated reactors for biotechnology. One prominent feature of vesicles is the semi-permeable nature of their membranes, able to support passive diffusion of individual solute species into/out of the compartment, in addition to an osmotic water flow in the opposite direction to the net solute concentration gradient. Crucially, this water flow affects the internal aqueous volume of the vesicle in response to osmotic imbalances, in particular those created by ongoing reactions within the system. In this theoretical study, we pay attention to this often overlooked aspect and show, via the use of a simple semi-spatial vesicle reactor model, that a changing solvent volume introduces interesting non-linearities into an encapsulated chemistry. Focusing on bistability, we demonstrate how a changing volume compartment can degenerate existing bistable reactions, but also promote emergent bistability from very simple reactions, which are not bistable in bulk conditions. One particularly remarkable effect is that two or more chemically-independent reactions, with mutually exclusive reaction kinetics, are able to couple their dynamics through the variation of solvent volume inside the vesicle. Our results suggest that other chemical innovations should be expected when more realistic and active properties of protocellular compartments are taken into account. This work was supported by the Botin Foundation and by the Santa Fe Institute, and Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo acknowledges financial support from the Basque Government (IT 590-13), Spanish Ministry of Economía y Competitividad (FFI2011-25665) and European COST Actions CM1304 and TD1308. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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