Light-Harvesting Artificial Cells for the Generation of ATP and NADPH^†

The bottom-up construction of self-powered artificial cells is significant to understand the energy supply and metabolism of nature cells. Here, we demonstrate an efficient manner to build thylakoid-containing artificial cells, which continuously convert light energy into chemical energy to supply adenosine 5’-triphosphate (ATP) under light illumination. The production of ATP supplies energy to promote the biological enzyme cascade reactions, where glucose is transformed into glucose 6-phosphate (G6P) under the catalysis of hexokinase (HK). G6P was further converted to gluconolactone 6-phosphate (PG) in the presence of 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH), meanwhile NADP⁺ was converted to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH). The self-powered artificial cells were demonstrated to generate ATP and NADPH successively, which provided a way for building more complicated artificial cells.