Out-of-equilibrium microcompartments for the bottom-up integration of metabolic functions

Thomas Beneyton, Dorothee Krafft, Claudia Bednarz, Christin Kleineberg, Christian Woelfer, Ivan Ivanov, Tanja Vidaković-Koch, Kai Sundmacher and Jean-Christophe Baret ()
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Thomas Beneyton: CNRS, Univ. Bordeaux, CRPP, UMR 5031
Dorothee Krafft: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems
Claudia Bednarz: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems
Christin Kleineberg: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems
Christian Woelfer: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems
Ivan Ivanov: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems
Tanja Vidaković-Koch: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems
Kai Sundmacher: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems
Jean-Christophe Baret: CNRS, Univ. Bordeaux, CRPP, UMR 5031

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Self-sustained metabolic pathways in microcompartments are the corner-stone for living systems. From a technological viewpoint, such pathways are a mandatory prerequisite for the reliable design of artificial cells functioning out-of-equilibrium. Here we develop a microfluidic platform for the miniaturization and analysis of metabolic pathways in man-made microcompartments formed of water-in-oil droplets. In a modular approach, we integrate in the microcompartments a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD)-dependent enzymatic reaction and a NAD-regeneration module as a minimal metabolism. We show that the microcompartments sustain a metabolically active state until the substrate is fully consumed. Reversibly, the external addition of the substrate reboots the metabolic activity of the microcompartments back to an active state. We therefore control the metabolic state of thousands of independent monodisperse microcompartments, a step of relevance for the construction of large populations of metabolically active artificial cells.

Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04825-1

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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04825-1

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