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Published on: September 9, 2022
Exchange Controls Coarsening of Surface Condensates
Riccardo Rossetto1,2, Marcel Ernst1,2, David Zwicker1
1Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Am Faßberg 17, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
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Biological membranes often exhibit heterogeneous protein patterns, which cells control. Strong patterns, like the polarity spot in budding yeast, can be described as surface condensates, formed by physical interactions between constituents. However, it is unclear how these interactions affect the material exchange with the bulk. To study this, we analyze a thermodynamically consistent model, which reveals that passive exchange generally accelerates the coarsening of surface condensates. Active exchange can further accelerate coarsening, although it can also fully arrest it and induce complex patterns involving various length scales. We reveal how these behaviors are related to nonlocal transport via diffusion through the bulk, rationalizing the various scaling laws that we observe and allowing us to interpret biologically relevant scenarios.
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