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Growth of Giant Peptide Vesicles Driven by Compartmentalized Transcription–Translation Activity
Author(s) -
Frank Thomas,
Vogele Kilian,
Dupin Aurore,
Simmel Friedrich C.,
Pirzer Tobias
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.202003366
Subject(s) - vesicle , green fluorescent protein , transcription (linguistics) , artificial cell , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry , compartmentalization (fire protection) , chemistry , peptide , biophysics , gene expression , biology , membrane , gene , enzyme , linguistics , philosophy
Compartmentalization and spatial organization of biochemical reactions are essential for the establishment of complex metabolic pathways inside synthetic cells. Phospholipid and fatty acid membranes are the most natural candidates for this purpose, but also polymers have shown great potential as enclosures of artificial cell mimics. Herein, we report on the formation of giant vesicles in a size range of 1 μm–100 μm using amphiphilic elastin‐like polypeptides. The peptide vesicles can accommodate cell‐free gene expression reactions, which is demonstrated by the transcription of a fluorescent RNA aptamer and the production of a fluorescent protein. Importantly, gene expression inside the vesicles leads to a strong growth of their size—up to an order of magnitude in volume in several cases—which is driven by changes in osmotic pressure, resulting in fusion events and uptake of membrane peptides from the environment.