Compartmentalized Intracellular Click Chemistry with Biodegradable Polymersomes

Abstract

Polymersome nanoreactors that can be employed as artificial organelles have gained much interest over the past decades. Such systems often include biological catalysts (i.e., enzymes) so that they can undertake chemical reactions in cellulo. Examples of nanoreactor artificial organelles that acquire metal catalysts in their structure are limited, and their application in living cells remains fairly restricted. In part, this shortfall is due to difficulties associated with constructing systems that maintain their stability in vitro, let alone the toxicity they impose on cells. This study demonstrates a biodegradable and biocompatible polymersome nanoreactor platform, which can be applied as an artificial organelle in living cells. The ability of the artificial organelles to covalently and non‐covalently incorporate tris(triazolylmethyl)amine‐Cu(I) complexes in their membrane is shown. Such artificial organelles are capable of effectively catalyzing a copper‐catalyzed azide‐alkyne cycloaddition intracellularly, without compromising the cells’ integrity. The platform represents a step forward in the application of polymersome‐based nanoreactors as artificial organelles.

Trends in the Synthesis of Polymer Nano‐ and Microscale Materials for Bio‐Related Applications

“…to prepare artificial melanosomes that produce photoprotective pigments, [ 153 ] and to catalyze the in situ formation of fluorescent dyes. [ 154 ]…”

Enhancement of Sensitivity for Retroreflection‐Based Biosensor by Controlling Polymer Brush on Janus Particles

“…Herein, we report the preparation of RJP containing controllable polymer chain lengths with azide pendant groups that can be easily substituted with various biomolecules via click reaction. [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] Among the surface brushing methods, we used GT and GF method to control the molecular weight of the surface brush, which is directly related to the density of the azide groups on the surface. Sensitivity against biotargets has also been compared in terms of the number of surface functional groups via retroreflective sensing methods, [27,28] and the quantity of azide groups on the RJP surface was found to affect the sensitivity of target DNA detection.…”

Positively Charged Biodegradable Polymersomes with Structure Inherent Fluorescence as Artificial Organelles

“…Examples of polymersomes and dyes used to label them are vast in the literature. One example from our lab is poly­(ethylene glycol)- block -poly­(caprolactone-gradient-trimethylene carbonate) (PEG-P­(CL- g -TMC))-based polymersomes, which can be coassembled with block copolymers that are prefunctionalized with the BODIPY dye . However, the phenomenon of dye leaching poses challenges in attributing the fluorescent signal to either the particle itself or the dye/dye–polymer conjugate.…”