期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2017
卷号：114
期号：17
页码：4342-4347
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1611959114
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Colloidal particles endowed with specific time-dependent interactions are a promising route for realizing artificial materials that have the properties of living ones. Previous work has demonstrated how this system can give rise to self-replication. Here, we introduce the process of colloidal catalysis, in which clusters of particles catalyze the creation of other clusters through templating reactions. Surprisingly, we find that simple templating rules generically lead to the production of huge numbers of clusters. The templating reactions among this sea of clusters give rise to an exponentially growing catalytic cycle, a specific realization of Dyson’s notion of an exponentially growing metabolism. We demonstrate this behavior with a fixed set of interactions between particles chosen to allow a catalysis of a specific six-particle cluster from a specific seven-particle cluster, yet giving rise to the catalytic production of a sea of clusters of sizes between 2 and 11 particles. The fact that an exponentially growing cycle emerges naturally from such a simple scheme demonstrates that the emergence of exponentially growing metabolisms could be simpler than previously imagined.
