Droplets in underlying chemical communication recreate cell interaction behaviors

BERLI, CLAUDIO L. A.; PIZARRO, AGUSTIN D.; BELLINO, MARTÍN G.; SOLER-ILLIA, GALO J. A. A.

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS

Nature Research

Año: 2022 vol. 13

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.