A tiny biodegradable bubble can move away from a chemical on its own, without a motor. Living cells need complex molecular machinery to do this. This discovery by researchers led by chemist Daniela Wilson at Radboud University, together with colleagues at Durham University, is a step toward artificial cells with lifelike behavior and could, in the long term, provide an interesting approach for self-steering particles in targeted drug delivery.

Living cells’ ability to “smell” chemicals around them and move toward food or away from toxins is called chemotaxis. Wilson says, “Cells do this with elaborate machinery: Receptors in their membrane detect the signal, after which an internal skeleton reshapes the cell to make it move. Researchers have been trying for years to build artificial particles that do the same. So far, almost all of them need extra parts, such as enzymes or catalysts attached to the surface that act like a small engine.”

In their research, published in Nature Chemistry, Wilson and her colleagues discovered that a very simple artificial “bubble” can move on its own, without a motor.