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Confocal Imaging of Confined Quiescent and Flowing Colloid-polymer Mixtures
Published on: May 20, 2014
The effect of polymer length in liquid-liquid phase separation
Gilberto Valdes-Garcia1,2, Kasun Gamage3,2, Casey Smith3
1Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
Abstract:
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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