Read it here: In situ synthesis within micron-sized hydrogel reactors created via programmable aerosol chemistry (open-access) Zhang, L.; Mehr, S. H. M., RSC Digital Discovery, 2024. Now, also featured on the front cover of Digital Discovery‘s December 2024 issue.
We’ve just had our latest paper published in RSC Digital Discovery! This is the result of Luokun’s brief but very productive internship in the group last year (separate blog post about his experience in the group). Luckily for us, Luokun has been offered a PhD position and will be staying with us, so plenty more cool science to look forward to!
What’s this paper really about?
One of our guiding principles in the group is that realising the full potential of digitisation requires a fresh look not just at what reacts with what, but also where this happens and what else is around. Nature is the master of surrounding reactivity with the right environment: just look at enzymes and how their active sites/prosthetic groups are nestled within a much larger structure; or how hopelessly impossible it seems for cellular processes to continue without the cell’s many membranes and modes of compartmentalising its activities. Containers can be smart — instead of being totally impermeable they can let certain things in/out but keep other from entering or leaving. And they don’t always have to be large like traditional glass containers in chemistry. In fact, for permeable containers being small allows molecules to reach the interior via diffusion (their random jittery movement), do something exciting, and then either leave or accumulate and build up like pearls in an oyster!
Our digital aerosol reactor, built entirely in-house, provides a way to produce millions of tiny chemical droplets and study their reactions. Digitizing our aerosol setup means tiny chemical “packets” can be released according to a computer program with very precise control over when and how much solution is sprayed. Our paper binds this progress with a way to turn these tiny liquid droplets into something more like a primitive cell. For this, we take advantage of gel-formation between alginate — a large molecule derived from seaweed — and calcium ions. This way, not only can we generate tiny hydrogel particles, but use them as tiny reactors by preloading them with reactive compounds.
Interested? Read on to find out more about what’s possible using these microscopic reactors.
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