Single-Protein Collapse Determines Phase Equilibria of a Biological Condensate

Han Yi Chou, Aleksei Aksimentiev

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Recent advances in microscopy of living cells have established membraneless organelles as critical elements of diverse biological processes. The body of experimental work suggests that formation of such organelles is driven by liquid-liquid phase separation, a physical process that has been studied extensively for both simple liquids and mixtures of polymers. Here, we combine molecular dynamics simulations with polymer theory to show that the thermodynamic behavior of one particular biomolecular condensate - fused in sarcoma (FUS) - can be quantitatively accounted for at the level of the chain collapse theory. First, we show that a particle-based molecular dynamics model can reproduce known phase separation properties of a FUS condensate, including its critical concentration and susceptibility to mutations. Next, we obtain a polymer physics representation of a FUS condensate by examining the behavior of a single FUS protein as a function of temperature. We use the chain collapse theory to determine the thermodynamic properties of the condensate and to characterize changes in the single-chain conformation at the onset of phase separation. Altogether, our findings suggest that the phase behavior of FUS condensates can be explained by the properties of individual FUS proteins and that the change in the FUS conformation is the main force driving for the phase separation.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)4923-4929
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Volume11
Issue number12
Early online dateMay 19 2020
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 18 2020

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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