Temporal Control over Complex, Simple, and Multiphase Coacervates using Ureolysis and Ammonium Carbonate Decomposition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Active compartmentalization is a fundamental property of life, as well as a key element in cell regulation. In order to build synthetic systems with emergent cell-like properties, we need to develop active compartments that form, disappear, and change properties autonomously over time. Here, we report a new strategy to induce temporal changes in coacervates using the urea-urease reaction. This reaction triggers the dissolution of complex coacervates after a controllable delay, as it increases ionic strength through the production of ammonium carbonate. This delayed dissolution can be directly used for a broad range of complex coacervates without any synthetic effort. Furthermore, ammonium carbonate can also decompose over time, evaporating from the solution. This combination of enzymatic synthesis and spontaneous decomposition of salt leads to transient coacervate dissolution, which can be used for the controlled release of cargo and for the modulation of a compartmentalized reaction. Cycles of dissolution/reformation can be repeated multiple times without any waste generation, although the number of cycles is limited by the denaturation of urease. Finally, by combining polyelectrolytes with a protected dipeptide, ureolysis can trigger the formation of multiphase coacervates, as well as for the sequential formation, dissolution, and aggregation of simple and complex coacervates.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".