ArticleNature communications2025
Photochemical synthesis of natural lipids in artificial and living cells.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bioorthogonal chemistry for deciphering lipid biology in living systems.RSC chemical biology · 2026Review
- Design of Fuel-Dependent, Complex-Coacervate-Based Synthetic Cells.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2026Article
- Let There be Light! Light as an Engine and Regulator in Synthetic Cells.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Review
- Bottom-Up Synthetic Biology for Artificial Cell Design: From Scaffold Materials to Functional Integration.Journal of microbiology and biotechnology · 2026Review
- A cationic single-chain bolalipid forms stable vesicles with distinct interfacial behavior.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Biomimetic Construction of Abiotic Membranes Through Acylation of Cationic Diamino Acids.Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2026Article
- DNA affects the phenotype of fuel-dependent coacervate droplets.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Exploring lipid diversity and minimalism to define membrane requirements for synthetic cells.FEBS letters · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Lipid synthesis plays a central role in cell structure, signaling, and metabolism. A general method for the abiogenesis of natural lipids could transform the development of lifelike artificial cells and unlock new ways to explore lipid functions in living cells. Here, we demonstrate the abiotic formation of natural lipids in water using visible-light-driven photoredox chemistry. Radical-mediated coupling of hydrocarbon tails to polar single-chain precursors yields lipids identical to those enzymatically formed. Spatiotemporally controlled lipid generation promotes de novo vesicle formation, growth, and division. Lipid synthesis can be driven by RNA aptamers that specifically bind and activate photocatalysts, establishing a direct link between abiotic lipid metabolism and nucleic acid sequence. Light-mediated assembly of bioactive lipids can take place in living cells, triggering signaling events such as apoptosis and protein kinase C (PKC) activation. Our finding that photochemical lipid synthesis can be driven by simple genetic elements could be the starting point for developing protocells capable of Darwinian evolution. Additionally, the ability to generate specific membrane lipids in living cells with precise spatiotemporal control will advance studies on how lipid structure influences cellular function.
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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.