posted on 2022-12-28, 18:04authored byKrishnendu Das, Haridas Kar, Rui Chen, Ilaria Fortunati, Camilla Ferrante, Paolo Scrimin, Luca Gabrielli, Leonard J. Prins
The self-assembly
of surfactant-based structures that rely for
their formation on the combination of a thermodynamically controlled
and a dissipative pathway is described. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)
acts as a high-affinity template and triggers assembly formation at
low surfactant concentrations. The presence of these assemblies creates
the conditions for the activation of a dissipative self-assembly process
by a weak-affinity substrate. The substrate-induced recruitment of
additional surfactants leads to the spontaneous formation of catalytic
hotspots in the ATP-stabilized assemblies that cleave the substrate.
As a result of the two self-assembly processes, catalysis can be observed
at a surfactant concentration at which low catalytic activity is observed
in the absence of ATP.