ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Lipid sponge droplets as programmable synthetic organelles.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Ethanol-Guided Hybridization of Extracellular Vesicles with Liquid-Crystalline Lipid Nanoparticles.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2026Article
- Entropy-Driven Amino Acid-Based Coacervates with Enzyme-Free Metabolism and Prebiotic Robustness.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Biomimetic membrane in a microfluidic chip for the electrical and optical monitoring of biological reactions.Nature protocols · 2025Review
- Non-equilibrium demixing and dissolution of chiral coacervates via intrinsic catalysis.Nature communications · 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
- Thermally Driven Dynamic Behaviors in Polymeric Vesicles.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2025Article
- Abiotic lipid metabolism enables membrane plasticity in artificial cells.Nature chemistry · 2025Article
- Functional diversity and molecular interactions of small membrane proteins in bacteria.microLife · 2025Review
- The role of biomolecular condensates in protein aggregation.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2024Review
- Self-assembly of stabilized droplets from liquid-liquid phase separation for higher-order structures and functions.Communications chemistry · 2024Review
- Cell-Like Synthetic Supramolecular Soft Materials Realized in Multicomponent, Non-/Out-of-Equilibrium Dynamic Systems.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2024Article
- Characterizing the Self-Assembly Properties of Monoolein Lipid Isosteres.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2023Article
- Atg8-PE protein-basedAutophagy · 2022Review
- Discovery of a phase-separating small molecule that selectively sequesters tubulin in cells.Chemical science · 2022Article
- Synthetic Silica Nano-Organelles for Regulation of Cascade Reactions in Multi-Compartmentalized Systems.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2022Article
- Temperature-Dependent Reversible Morphological Transformations inThe journal of physical chemistry. B · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Living cells segregate molecules and reactions in various subcellular compartments known as organelles. Spatial organization is likely essential for expanding the biochemical functions of synthetic reaction systems, including artificial cells. Many studies have attempted to mimic organelle functions using lamellar membrane-bound vesicles. However, vesicles typically suffer from highly limited transport across the membranes and an inability to mimic the dense membrane networks typically found in organelles such as the endoplasmic reticulum. Here, we describe programmable synthetic organelles based on highly stable nonlamellar sponge phase droplets that spontaneously assemble from a single-chain galactolipid and nonionic detergents. Due to their nanoporous structure, lipid sponge droplets readily exchange materials with the surrounding environment. In addition, the sponge phase contains a dense network of lipid bilayers and nanometric aqueous channels, which allows different classes of molecules to partition based on their size, polarity, and specific binding motifs. The sequestration of biologically relevant macromolecules can be programmed by the addition of suitably functionalized amphiphiles to the droplets. We demonstrate that droplets can harbor functional soluble and transmembrane proteins, allowing for the colocalization and concentration of enzymes and substrates to enhance reaction rates. Droplets protect bound proteins from proteases, and these interactions can be engineered to be reversible and optically controlled. Our results show that lipid sponge droplets permit the facile integration of membrane-rich environments and self-assembling spatial organization with biochemical reaction systems.
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Registered trials
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.