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Chemical biology

How to sweet-talk bacteria

Small sugar molecules produced by an autocatalytic reaction cycle confined inside vesicle-based 'artificial cells' can trigger a response in living bacterial cells.

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Figure 1: A schematic representation of protocell-to-cell communication.

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Cooper, G., Cronin, L. How to sweet-talk bacteria. Nature Chem 1, 342–343 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.306

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