Confinement-induced fractionation and liquid-liquid phase separation of polymer mixtures

TL;DR

This study uses simulations to show how confinement in droplets causes polymer mixtures to separate by length and undergo phase separation at lower concentrations than in bulk, revealing new insights into cellular condensates.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of confinement and molecular weight distribution on phase behavior of polymer mixtures, a novel aspect not extensively studied before.

Findings

Confinement causes spatial separation of polymers by length.

Polydispersity enhances local concentration and phase separation.

Phase separation occurs at lower concentrations under confinement.

Abstract

The formation of (bio)molecular condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation in cells has received increasing attention, as these coacervates play important functional and regulatory roles within biological systems. However, the majority of studies focused on the behavior of pure systems in bulk solutions, thus neglecting confinement effects and the interplay between the numerous molecules present in cells. To advance our knowledge, we perform simulations of binary polymer mixtures in droplets, considering both monodisperse and polydisperse molecular weight distributions for the longer polymer species. We find that confinement induces a spatial separation of the polymers by length, with the shorter ones moving to the droplet surface. This partitioning causes a distinct increase of the local polymer concentration in the droplet center, which is more pronounced in polydisperse systems. Consequently, the systems exhibit liquid-liquid phase separation at average polymer concentrations where bulk systems are still in the one-phase regime.