Insua López, IgnacioMontenegro García, Javier2021-09-062021-09-062020I. Insua, J. Montenegro, Chem 2020, 6(7), 1652-16822451-9294http://hdl.handle.net/10347/26916One of the biggest challenges in modern chemistry is the preparation of synthetic materials with life-like behavior for the assembly of artificial cells. In recent years, numerous artificial systems that mimic cellular components and functions have been developed. Supramolecular chemistry plays a key role in such cell mimics given that non-covalent interactions control the shape and function of many biomolecules, such as DNA base pairing, protein structure, ligand-receptor binding, and lipid membrane packing. However, the complexity of living cells constitutes a major challenge for their bottom-up assembly from pure synthetic materials. Inspired by the building blocks of nature, a wide range of supramolecular systems have been developed to reproduce cellular functions such as cell-cell communication, signaling cascades, and dynamic cytoskeleton assemblies. This review surveys a selection of key advances in synthetic derivatives of biomolecules with supramolecular organization and life-like behavior by addressing their non-covalent foundation and integration as increasingly complex protocell modelseng© 2020 Elsevier Inc. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licenseAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Supramolecular chemistrySelf-assemblyLife-like materialsSynthetic cellsBiomimicryProtocellsjournal article10.1016/j.chempr.2020.06.005open access