Reorientation behavior in the helical motility of light-responsive spiral droplets
Reorientation behavior in the helical motility of light-responsive spiral droplets
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DOI：
10.1038/s41467-019-13201-6
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发表时间：
2019-11-20
影响因子：
16.6
通讯作者：
Katsonis, Nathalie
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lancia, Federico;Yamamoto, Takaki;Katsonis, Nathalie
支持生命有目的运动的物理化学过程基本上仍然未知。自推进的手性液滴提供了一个游泳细胞的极简模型，在富含表面活性剂的水中，手性手性液晶的液滴沿着螺旋线运动。我们证明，它们的轨迹的几何形状是由两个圈的数量，和手性，他们的螺旋组织。使用分子马达作为光可逆手性掺杂剂允许在右手和左手轨迹之间动态地转换，并且经受这种反转的液滴在也由螺旋圈数编码的方向上重新取向。这种运动行为源于手性的动态传递，从人工分子马达到受限的液晶，最终到螺旋轨迹，类似于游泳细胞和单细胞生物体的手性操作运动和重定向。
The physico-chemical processes supporting life's purposeful movement remain essentially unknown. Self-propelling chiral droplets offer a minimalistic model of swimming cells and, in surfactant-rich water, droplets of chiral nematic liquid crystals follow the threads of a screw. We demonstrate that the geometry of their trajectory is determined by both the number of turns in, and the handedness of, their spiral organization. Using molecular motors as photo-invertible chiral dopants allows converting between right-handed and left-handed trajectories dynamically, and droplets subjected to such an inversion reorient in a direction that is also encoded by the number of spiral turns. This motile behavior stems from dynamic transmission of chirality, from the artificial molecular motors to the liquid crystal in confinement and eventually to the helical trajectory, in analogy with the chirality-operated motion and reorientation of swimming cells and unicellular organisms.