TY - JOUR
T1 - Feedback and Communication in Active Hydrogel Spheres with pH Fronts
T2 - Facile Approaches to Grow Soft Hydrogel Structures
AU - Maity, Indrajit
AU - Sharma, Charu
AU - Lossada, Francisco
AU - Walther, Andreas
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge support by the DFG in WA3084/4-2. I.M. acknowledges partial support by a Marie Curie FRIAS COFUND fellowship and the funding from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 754340. We acknowledge Dr. Avik Samanta for his valuable suggestions. Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Funding Information:
We acknowledge support by the DFG in WA3084/4‐2. I.M. acknowledges partial support by a Marie Curie FRIAS COFUND fellowship and the funding from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska‐Curie grant agreement No 754340. We acknowledge Dr. Avik Samanta for his valuable suggestions. Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
PY - 2021/10/4
Y1 - 2021/10/4
N2 - Compartmentalized reaction networks regulating signal processing, communication and pattern formation are central to living systems. Towards achieving life-like materials, we compartmentalized urea-urease and more complex urea-urease/ester-esterase pH-feedback reaction networks into hydrogel spheres and investigate how fuel-driven pH fronts can be sent out from these spheres and regulated by internal reaction networks. Membrane characteristics are installed by covering urease spheres with responsive hydrogel shells. We then encapsulate the two networks (urea-urease and ester-esterase) separately into different hydrogel spheres to devise communication, pattern formation and attraction. Moreover, these pH fronts and patterns can be used for self-growing hydrogels, and for developing complex geometries from non-injectable hydrogels without 3D printing tools. This study opens possibilities for compartmentalized feedback reactions and their use in next generation materials fabrication.
AB - Compartmentalized reaction networks regulating signal processing, communication and pattern formation are central to living systems. Towards achieving life-like materials, we compartmentalized urea-urease and more complex urea-urease/ester-esterase pH-feedback reaction networks into hydrogel spheres and investigate how fuel-driven pH fronts can be sent out from these spheres and regulated by internal reaction networks. Membrane characteristics are installed by covering urease spheres with responsive hydrogel shells. We then encapsulate the two networks (urea-urease and ester-esterase) separately into different hydrogel spheres to devise communication, pattern formation and attraction. Moreover, these pH fronts and patterns can be used for self-growing hydrogels, and for developing complex geometries from non-injectable hydrogels without 3D printing tools. This study opens possibilities for compartmentalized feedback reactions and their use in next generation materials fabrication.
KW - chemical reaction networks
KW - hydrogels
KW - life-like systems
KW - pH feedback system
KW - supramolecular chemistry
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85113932745&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/anie.202109735
DO - 10.1002/anie.202109735
M3 - Article
C2 - 34347941
AN - SCOPUS:85113932745
SN - 1433-7851
VL - 60
SP - 22537
EP - 22546
JO - Angewandte Chemie - International Edition
JF - Angewandte Chemie - International Edition
IS - 41
ER -