title: Spontaneous emergence of catalytic cycles with colloidal spheres.
abstract: Colloidal particles endowed with specific time-dependent interactions are a promising route for realizing artificial materials that have the properties of living ones. Previous work has demonstrated how this system can give rise to self-replication. Here, we introduce the process of colloidal catalysis, in which clusters of particles catalyze the creation of other clusters through templating reactions. Surprisingly, we find that simple templating rules generically lead to the production of huge numbers of clusters. The templating reactions among this sea of clusters give rise to an exponentially growing catalytic cycle, a specific realization of Dyson's notion of an exponentially growing metabolism. We demonstrate this behavior with a fixed set of interactions between particles chosen to allow a catalysis of a specific six-particle cluster from a specific seven-particle cluster, yet giving rise to the catalytic production of a sea of clusters of sizes between 2 and 11 particles. The fact that an exponentially growing cycle emerges naturally from such a simple scheme demonstrates that the emergence of exponentially growing metabolisms could be simpler than previously imagined.
authors.affiliation: Soft Matter and Chemistry Department, École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, 75005 Paris, France; zorana.zeravcic@espci.fr.|Living Matter Laboratory, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10065.|Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.|Kavli Institute of Bionano Science and Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
authors.forename: Zorana
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zeravcic
authors.affiliation: Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.|Kavli Institute of Bionano Science and Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
authors.forename: Michael P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Brenner
keywords: DNA-coated colloids; catalytic cycles; metabolism; templating