Themed collection Editor’s Choice – Subi George

Engineered artificial cells respond to environmental cues through a pre-programmed enzymatic machinery that induces spatio-structural organization and activation of effector proteins at the lipid membrane.

The bottom-up synthesis of a self-reproducing protocell model enables the study of emergent properties distinctive to life.

We show that hidden kinetic states have a dramatic impact on the thermodynamics of supramolecular polymerization, enabling new aggregation pathways with potentially new functionalities.

Living crystallisation-driven self-assembly facilitates the bottom-up assembly of electronic devices.

The addition of ATP under dissipative conditions to a complex mixture causes the transient upregulation of hydrazone-bond formation.

Constitutional dynamic networks have been developed to simultaneously control the output of two interconnected dynamic processes over several species of the same reaction mixture.

A new class of bent amphiphilic alkynylplatinum(II) terpyridine complexes was found to adopt different modes of molecular stacking to give diverse nanostructures.

Near-infrared room-temperature phosphorescence was achieved by employing iodine substituted Bodipy into amorphous polymers. The self-healable gels were also obtained with the incorporation of a crosslinker and quadruple hydrogen bond based moieties.

Time-resolved dynamic light scattering unveiled the multiscale self-assembly mechanism of metal–organic polyhedra and allowed for inducing asymmetry in a porous gel.

Different self-assembled structures can be formed by varying the chirality of a functionalised dipeptide allowing gels with different properties to be prepared.

We report an ultralong room-temperature phosphorescence (2.62 s) based on cucurbit[6]uril host and phenyl-methyl-pyridinium guest for data encryption. Encapsulation of CB[6] boosts intersystem crossing and suppresses nonradiative relaxation of guest.

Natural systems access transient high energy self-assembled structures for temporal regulation of different biological functions through dissipative processes.

Spontaneously aggregation of a carboxylic acid appended NDI can be retarted by intra-molecular H-bonding. With catalytic DMAP or DBU, the meta-stable monomer exhibits living supramolecular polymerization and generates ultra-thin 2D sheet.

New method of living supramolecular polymerization is demonstrated. Spontaneous nucleation of a reactive monomer is suppressed by using a ‘dummy’ monomer. Addition of seeds can initiate supramolecular polymerization in a chain-growth manner.

A switchable perylene monoimide which undergoes reversible morphological and electronic changes controlled by the ionization state of the phenolic oxygen.

Strong, multiple-stranded Cu–N bonds lead to a group of highly emissive 1D-Cu_mI_m(L) hybrid yellow phosphors with excellent thermal- and photo-stability.

Direct population of triplet states via singlet-to-triplet absorption red-shifts the excitation wavelength and improves the organic afterglow efficiency under ambient conditions.

By using a vortex mixing-accompanied self-assembly strategy, homochiral entities with controlled handedness were obtained from exclusively achiral molecules.

By manipulating both the dissolution sequence of polymer crystallites and the growth rate of polymer unimers, patchy comicelles and block comicelles with uniform and controllable length can be obtained.

Co-assemblies of platinum(II) complexes produce amplified circularly polarized phosphorescence emission.