IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v12y2021i1d10.1038_s41467-021-21832-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Engineering motile aqueous phase-separated droplets via liposome stabilisation

Author

Listed:
  • Shaobin Zhang

    (Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane)

  • Claudia Contini

    (Imperial College London
    Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane)

  • James W. Hindley

    (Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane
    Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane
    Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane)

  • Guido Bolognesi

    (Loughborough University)

  • Yuval Elani

    (Imperial College London
    Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane
    Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane)

  • Oscar Ces

    (Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane
    Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane
    Imperial College London, 82 Wood Lane)

Abstract

There are increasing efforts to engineer functional compartments that mimic cellular behaviours from the bottom-up. One behaviour that is receiving particular attention is motility, due to its biotechnological potential and ubiquity in living systems. Many existing platforms make use of the Marangoni effect to achieve motion in water/oil (w/o) droplet systems. However, most of these systems are unsuitable for biological applications due to biocompatibility issues caused by the presence of oil phases. Here we report a biocompatible all aqueous (w/w) PEG/dextran Pickering-like emulsion system consisting of liposome-stabilised cell-sized droplets, where the stability can be easily tuned by adjusting liposome composition and concentration. We demonstrate that the compartments are capable of negative chemotaxis: these droplets can respond to a PEG/dextran polymer gradient through directional motion down to the gradient. The biocompatibility, motility and partitioning abilities of this droplet system offers new directions to pursue research in motion-related biological processes.

Suggested Citation

  • Shaobin Zhang & Claudia Contini & James W. Hindley & Guido Bolognesi & Yuval Elani & Oscar Ces, 2021. "Engineering motile aqueous phase-separated droplets via liposome stabilisation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-11, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-21832-x
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21832-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21832-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-021-21832-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tomoya Maruyama & Jing Gong & Masahiro Takinoue, 2024. "Temporally controlled multistep division of DNA droplets for dynamic artificial cells," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-21832-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.