ArticleNature communications2021
Sustained enzymatic activity and flow in crowded protein droplets.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed.
- Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation-Enhanced Multienzyme Catalysis: Mechanisms and Applications.ChemSusChem · 2026Review
- Bacterial ribonucleoprotein bodies maintain an acidic pH environment as a mechanism of enzyme regulation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Molecular Crowding Stabilizes DNA Coacervate Droplets and Generates Self-Organized Characteristic Patterns.JACS Au · 2026Article
- Complete enzyme clustering enhances coenzyme Q biosynthesis via substrate channeling.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Nucleation Kinetics Reveals a Distinct Biological Function Space of Biomolecular Condensates.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Liquid-liquid phase separation in cancer therapy resistance.iScience · 2026Review
- A Self-Organized Liquid Reaction Container for Cellular Memory.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Partition Coefficients Reveal Changes in Properties of Low-Contrast Biomolecular Condensates.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Coacervate droplets as pH-regionalized protocells.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Biomolecular condensates sustain pH gradients at equilibrium through charge neutralization.Nature chemistry · 2026Article
- Compartmentalization and Aggregation of Biomolecular Condensates in Crowded Hydrogels for Enhanced Nucleic Acid Diagnosis.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- PhaseTransfer: A transfer learning framework for efficient phase diagram mapping.npj computational materials · 2026Article
- Protein codes and mobility together shape cellular function and disease.Trends in biochemical sciences · 2026Review
- Emergent Chemical Reactivity and Complexity of RNA Condensates.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Article
- Microbial Growth: Role of Water Activity and Viscoelasticity of the Cell Compartments.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Sticky enzymes: increased metabolic efficiency via substrate-dependent enzyme clustering.PRX life · 2025Article
- Technology Roadmap of Micro/Nanorobots.ACS nano · 2025Review
- Enhancement of enzymatic activity by biomolecular condensates through pH buffering.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Dynamic Cytoplasm: A Physical Regulator of Enzymatic Function.Biochemistry · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Living cells harvest energy from their environments to drive the chemical processes that enable life. We introduce a minimal system that operates at similar protein concentrations, metabolic densities, and length scales as living cells. This approach takes advantage of the tendency of phase-separated protein droplets to strongly partition enzymes, while presenting minimal barriers to transport of small molecules across their interface. By dispersing these microreactors in a reservoir of substrate-loaded buffer, we achieve steady states at metabolic densities that match those of the hungriest microorganisms. We further demonstrate the formation of steady pH gradients, capable of driving microscopic flows. Our approach enables the investigation of the function of diverse enzymes in environments that mimic cytoplasm, and provides a flexible platform for studying the collective behavior of matter driven far from equilibrium.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.