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

Abstract

Comprehensive Summary 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.