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Abstract:
Regulation of chemical reactivity in reaction cascades is critical to the functioning and survival of living organisms. In nature, an asymmetry in chemical communication is often controlled by compartmentalizing active species, e.g. enzymes, within cells or subcellular organelles. In this work, we describe an artificial droplet network that exhibits programmed and directional communication capable to perform a multistep enzymatic cascade reaction across multiple droplets. More specifically, a non-reciprocal transfer of substrates between enzyme-containing aqueous emulsion droplets is realized by (biochemically) induced osmolarity gradients and concomitant concentration gradients then direct an enzymatic cascade reaction across different droplets. Given the generalizable nature of this approach, we believe the herein developed guidelines can be extended to other enzymes and enzyme-linked assays thereby increasing the specificity in chemotactic signaling cascades.
