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Division of Environmental Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), 77 Chengam-ro, Nam-gu, Pohang, 37673, Republic of Korea.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA.
Commun Chem. 2020 Jun 26;3(1):83. doi: 10.1038/s42004-020-0328-8.
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.
生物聚合物的复合凝聚驱动液-液相分离（LLPS）作为活细胞中的一种新相已引起关注。在这种情况下，对LLPS的研究通常针对具有化学和结构复杂性的蛋白质，尚不清楚哪些特性对于复合凝聚与蛋白质特异性而言是至关重要的。本研究聚焦于聚乙二醇（PEG）——一种广泛使用的分子拥挤剂——在LLPS中的作用。值得注意的是，缺乏疏水性和序列复杂性的带电聚合物再现了熵驱动的LLPS，并且其倾向因PEG而显著增强。实验和场论模拟结果与PEG通过聚合物脱水驱动LLPS一致，并且表明PEG在不分配到致密凝聚相的情况下发挥其作用。那么，赋予生物系统LLPS额外功能意义变化的任务就落在生物学身上了。
