The confluence of recent discoveries of the roles of biomolecular liquids in living systems and modern abilities to precisely synthesize and modify nucleic acids (NAs) has led to a surge of interest in liquid phases of NAs. These phases can be formed primarily from NAs, as driven by base-pairing interactions, or from the electrostatic combination (coacervation) of negatively charged NAs and positively charged molecules. Generally, the use of sequence-engineered NAs provides the means to tune microsopic particle properties, and thus imbue specific, customizable behaviors into the resulting liquids. In this way, researchers have used NA liquids to tackle fundamental problems in the physics of finite valence soft materials, and to create liquids with novel structured and/or multi-functional properties. Here, we review this growing field, discussing the theoretical background of NA liquid phase separation, quantitative understanding of liquid material properties, and the broad and growing array of functional demonstrations in these materials. We close with a few comments discussing remaining open questions and challenges in the field.

中文翻译：

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 核酸液体


最近关于生物分子液体在生命系统中的作用的发现与精确合成和修饰核酸 (NA) 的现代能力相结合，引起了人们对液相 NA 的兴趣激增。这些相主要由碱基配对相互作用驱动的 NA 形成，或由带负电的 NA 和带正电的分子的静电组合（凝聚）形成。一般来说，序列工程 NA 的使用提供了调整微观颗粒特性的方法，从而将特定的、可定制的行为注入到所得液体中。通过这种方式，研究人员使用NA液体来解决有限价软材料物理学中的基本问题，并创造出具有新颖结构和/或多功能特性的液体。在这里，我们回顾了这个不断发展的领域，讨论了NA液相分离的理论背景、对液体材料特性的定量理解，以及这些材料中广泛且不断增长的功能演示。最后，我们以一些评论来讨论该领域中尚未解决的问题和挑战。