Liquid demixing in elastic networks: cavitation, permeation, or size selection?

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to understand how elastic networks influence liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) in biological systems, predicting new droplet phases including size-limited and network-including condensates.

Contribution

It introduces a model accounting for capillary forces, heterogeneity, and nonlinear mechanics to predict novel LLPS behaviors in elastic networks.

Findings

Cavitated droplets fully exclude the network.

Size-limited, pore-scale droplets can form in chromatin networks.

Network-including macroscopic droplets are thermodynamically possible.

Abstract

Demixing of multicomponent biomolecular systems via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) has emerged as a potentially unifying mechanism governing the formation of several membrane-less intracellular organelles ("condensates"), both in the cytoplasm (e.g., stress granules) and in the nucleoplasm (e.g., nucleoli). While both in vivo experiments and studies of synthetic systems demonstrate that LLPS is strongly affected by the presence of a macromolecular elastic network, a fundamental understanding of the role of such networks on LLPS is still lacking. Here we show that, upon accounting for capillary forces responsible for network expulsion, small-scale heterogeneity of the network, and its nonlinear mechanical properties, an intriguing picture of LLPS emerges. Specifically, we predict that, in addition to the experimentally observed cavitated droplets which fully exclude the network, two other phases are thermodynamically possible: elastically arrested, size-limited droplets at the network pore scale, and network-including macroscopic droplets. In particular, pore size-limited droplets may emerge in chromatin networks, with implications for structure and function of nucleoplasmic condensates.