Bio-Inspired Polymersome Nanoreactors

Polymersome nanoreactors for enzymatic ring-opening polymerization.

Polystyrene-polyisocyanopeptide (PS-PIAT) polymersomes containing CALB in two different locations, one in the aqueous inner compartment and one in the bilayer, were investigated for enzymatic ring-opening polymerization of lactones in water. It is shown that the monomers 8-octanolactone and dodecalactone yield oligomers with this polymersome system. It is also observed that the polymerization a...

Biocatalytic oxidation by chloroperoxidase from Caldariomyces fumago in polymersome nanoreactors.

The encapsulation of chloroperoxidase from Caldariomyces fumago (CPO) in block copolymer polymersomes is reported. Fluorescence and electron microscopy show that when the encapsulating conditions favour self-assembly of the block copolymer, the enzyme is incorporated with concentrations that are 50 times higher than the enzyme concentration before encapsulation. The oxidation of two substrates ...

Permeable Protein-Loaded Polymersome Cascade Nanoreactors by Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly

Enzyme loading of polymersomes requires permeability to enable them to interact with the external environment, typically requiring addition of complex functionality to enable porosity. Herein, we describe a synthetic route towards intrinsically permeable polymersomes loaded with functional proteins using initiator-free visible light-mediated polymerization-induced self-assembly (photo-PISA) und...

Bio-inspired Grammatical Inference

The field of Grammatical Inference was originally motivated by the problem of natural language acquisition. However, the formal models proposed within this field have left aside this linguistic motivation. In this paper, we propose to improve models and techniques used in Grammatical Inference by using ideas coming from linguistic studies. In that way, we try to give a new bio-inspiration to th...

Bio-Inspired Computing Architectures