Researchers at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) have created the world’s simplest artificial cell capable of chemical navigation, migrating toward specific substances like living cells do.

This breakthrough, published in Science Advances, demonstrates how microscopic bubbles, called vesicles, can be programmed to follow chemical trails. This breakthrough reveals the bare essentials needed to make synthetic life move with purpose.

Decoding how vesicles navigate reveals how cells communicate and transport cargo, and provides a blueprint for engineering targeted drug delivery systems

Ionic liquids (ILs) are a class of molten salts with a collection of exciting properties, which have been employed for wide-ranging applications across chemistry, biology, and materials science. However, their inherently high viscosity hinders the ability of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to explore their structure-property relationships on large spatiotemporal scales. Coarse-grained (CG) models address this challenge by retaining essential structural features while eliminating some atomic details, significantly reducing computational costs. A team of theoretical chemists presented the latest advances in IL CG models, with particular emphasis on the procedures for developing efficient CG models and parameterization methods with the aid of machine learning models. They also summarized applications of CG models in biological and electrochemical systems. This work was published in Industrial Chemistry & Materials on 09 Jun 2025.