Dehydration Entropy Drives Liquid-liquid Phase Separation by Molecular Crowding

Overview

Journal Commun Chem

Publisher Springer Nature

Specialty Chemistry

Date 2023 Jan 27

PMID 36703474

Authors

Sohee Park

Ryan Barnes

Yanxian Lin

Byoung-Jin Jeon

Saeed Najafi

Kris T Delaney

Glenn H Fredrickson

Joan-Emma Shea

Dong Soo Hwang

Songi Han

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Complex coacervation driven liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of biopolymers has been attracting attention as a novel phase in living cells. Studies of LLPS in this context are typically of proteins harboring chemical and structural complexity, leaving unclear which properties are fundamental to complex coacervation versus protein-specific. This study focuses on the role of polyethylene glycol (PEG)-a widely used molecular crowder-in LLPS. Significantly, entropy-driven LLPS is recapitulated with charged polymers lacking hydrophobicity and sequence complexity, and its propensity dramatically enhanced by PEG. Experimental and field-theoretic simulation results are consistent with PEG driving LLPS by dehydration of polymers, and show that PEG exerts its effect without partitioning into the dense coacervate phase. It is then up to biology to impose additional variations of functional significance to the LLPS of biological systems.

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