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The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation

Understanding the thermodynamics that drive liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) is quite important given the number of diverse biomolecular systems undergoing this phenomenon. Many studies have focused on condensates of long polymers, but very few systems of short-polymer condensates have been obs...

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Autores principales: Valdes-Garcia, Gilberto, Gamage, Kasun, Smith, Casey, Martirosova, Karina, Feig, Michael, Lapidus, Lisa J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10270681/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37325682
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101415
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author Valdes-Garcia, Gilberto
Gamage, Kasun
Smith, Casey
Martirosova, Karina
Feig, Michael
Lapidus, Lisa J.
author_facet Valdes-Garcia, Gilberto
Gamage, Kasun
Smith, Casey
Martirosova, Karina
Feig, Michael
Lapidus, Lisa J.
author_sort Valdes-Garcia, Gilberto
collection PubMed
description Understanding the thermodynamics that drive liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) is quite important given the number of diverse biomolecular systems undergoing this phenomenon. Many studies have focused on condensates of long polymers, but very few systems of short-polymer condensates have been observed and studied. Here, we study a short-polymer system of various lengths of poly-adenine RNA and peptides formed by the RGRGG sequence repeats to understand the underlying thermodynamics of LLPS. Using the recently developed COCOMO coarse-grained (CG) model, we predicted condensates for lengths as short as 5–10 residues, which was then confirmed by experiment, making this one of the smallest LLPS systems yet observed. A free-energy model reveals that the length dependence of condensation is driven primarily by entropy of confinement. The simplicity of this system will provide the basis for understanding more biologically realistic systems.
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spelling pubmed-102706812023-06-15 The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation Valdes-Garcia, Gilberto Gamage, Kasun Smith, Casey Martirosova, Karina Feig, Michael Lapidus, Lisa J. Cell Rep Phys Sci Article Understanding the thermodynamics that drive liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) is quite important given the number of diverse biomolecular systems undergoing this phenomenon. Many studies have focused on condensates of long polymers, but very few systems of short-polymer condensates have been observed and studied. Here, we study a short-polymer system of various lengths of poly-adenine RNA and peptides formed by the RGRGG sequence repeats to understand the underlying thermodynamics of LLPS. Using the recently developed COCOMO coarse-grained (CG) model, we predicted condensates for lengths as short as 5–10 residues, which was then confirmed by experiment, making this one of the smallest LLPS systems yet observed. A free-energy model reveals that the length dependence of condensation is driven primarily by entropy of confinement. The simplicity of this system will provide the basis for understanding more biologically realistic systems. 2023-05-17 2023-05-08 /pmc/articles/PMC10270681/ /pubmed/37325682 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101415 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) ).
spellingShingle Article
Valdes-Garcia, Gilberto
Gamage, Kasun
Smith, Casey
Martirosova, Karina
Feig, Michael
Lapidus, Lisa J.
The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation
title The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation
title_full The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation
title_fullStr The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation
title_full_unstemmed The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation
title_short The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation
title_sort effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10270681/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37325682
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101415
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