Polyelectrolytes (PEs), generally, are well-studied species as they occur wide-spread in living cells to regulate intracellular organization. Examples from the past decade and, especially, work from Huck, Spruijt, and Boekhoven highlight how the incorporation of gradients from the environment and dissipation of chemical energy could enable the emergence of systems-level functions (e.g., as selfselection, growth and division, and dynamic phase transitions) from mixtures of polyelectrolytes. Weak PEs are particularly interesting as their tunable charge densities enable reversible switches during a complexation process. How the complexation or assembly of simple poly-acids and bases can be used to transmit information has not been established.