ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Enhanced transcription rates in membrane-free protocells formed by coacervation of cell lysate.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 135 papers.
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Who cites it
135 citing papers in PubMed.
- Patchy Membrane-Directed Multiphase Complex Coacervation.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Prebiotic β-Strand Peptides May Be a Plausible Solution to the Protocell Permeability Problem.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Review
- Bottom-Up Coacervate-Based Artificial Cells: Integrating Cellular Hallmarks into Complex Life-Like Systems.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Review
- Dynamics of synthetic transcriptional condensates emerge from RNA synthesis and degradation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Recent advances in coacervate protocells from passive catalysts to chemically programmable systems.Communications chemistry · 2026Review
- Complex Coacervate Emulsions as a Strategy to Stabilize Enzymes for Catalysis in Organic Solvents.ACS macro letters · 2026Article
- Stability of non-canonical nucleic acid structure as a potential modulator of cell fate.Nucleic acids research · 2026Review
- Design and applications of synthetic biomolecular condensates.Nature nanotechnology · 2026Review
- Autonomous biogenesis of all thirty proteins of the Escherichia coli translation machinery.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Bacterial chromosome conformation and cell-free gene expression in synthetic 2D compartments.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Amino acid-dependent TSC2 dephosphorylation by lysosome-PP2A regulates mTORC1 signaling transduction.Life science alliance · 2025Article
- Reconstituting alternative life using the test-bed of cell-free systems.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Smart coacervate microdroplets: biomimetic design, material innovations, and emerging applications in biomacromolecule delivery.Bioactive materials · 2025Review
- Exploring the effects of excipients on complex coacervation.Journal of colloid and interface science · 2025Article
- Regulating Protein Immobilization During Cell-Free Protein Synthesis in Hyaluronan Microgels.Advanced biology · 2025Article
- Metabolite-Responsive Control of Transcription by Phase Separation-Based Synthetic Organelles.ACS synthetic biology · 2025Article
- Growing functional artificial cytoskeletons in the viscoelastic confinement of DNA synthetic cells.Nature chemical engineering · 2025Article
- CRISPR/Cas Enzyme Catalysis in Liquid-Liquid Phase-Separated Systems.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Biomimetic Materials to Fabricate Artificial Cells.Chemical reviews · 2024Review
- Shape transformations in peptide-DNA coacervates driven by enzyme-catalyzed deacetylation.Soft matter · 2024Article
75 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Liquid-liquid phase transitions in complex mixtures of proteins and other molecules produce crowded compartments supporting in vitro transcription and translation. We developed a method based on picoliter water-in-oil droplets to induce coacervation in Escherichia coli cell lysate and follow gene expression under crowded and noncrowded conditions. Coacervation creates an artificial cell-like environment in which the rate of mRNA production is increased significantly. Fits to the measured transcription rates show a two orders of magnitude larger binding constant between DNA and T7 RNA polymerase, and five to six times larger rate constant for transcription in crowded environments, strikingly similar to in vivo rates. The effect of crowding on interactions and kinetics of the fundamental machinery of gene expression has a direct impact on our understanding of biochemical networks in vivo. Moreover, our results show the intrinsic potential of cellular components to facilitate macromolecular organization into membrane-free compartments by phase separation.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.