Droplets in underlying chemical communication recreate cell interaction behaviors

AGUSTIN A. PIZZARO; CLAUDIO L. A. BERLI; GALO J.A.A. SOLER-ILIA; MARTIN G. BELLINO

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS

Nature

Año: 2022

2041-1723

The sensory-motor interaction is a hallmark of living systems. However, developing inanimatesystems with “recognize and attack” abilities remains challenging. On the other hand, controllingthe inter-droplet dynamics on surfaces is key in microengineering and biomedicalapplications. We show here that a pair of droplets can become intelligently interactive(chemospecific stimulus-response inter-droplet autonomous operation) when placed on ananoporous thin film surface. We find an attacker-victim-like non-reciprocal interactionbetween spatially separated droplets leading to an only-in-one shape instability that triggers adrop projection to selectively couple, resembling cellular phenomenologies such as pseudopodemission and phagocytic-like functions. The nanopore-driven underlying communicationand associated chemical activity are the main physical ingredients behind theobserved behavior. Our results reveal that basic features found in many living cell types canemerge from a simple two-droplet framework. This work is a promising step towards thedesign of microfluidic smart robotics and for origin-of-life protocell models.