Fractal-Dependent Growth of Solidlike Condensates,Physical Review Letters

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Fractal-Dependent Growth of Solidlike Condensates
Physical Review Letters ( IF 8.1 ) Pub Date : 2024-09-10 , DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.133.118401
Feipeng Chen ₁ , Wei Guo _{1,

2} , Ho Cheung Shum _{1,

2}

Affiliation

The phenomenon of droplet growth occurs in various industrial and natural processes. Recently, the discovery of liquidlike condensates within cells has sparked an increasing interest in understanding their growth behaviors. These condensates exhibit varying material properties that are closely related to many cellular functions and diseases, particularly during the phase transition from liquidlike droplets to solidlike aggregates. However, how the liquid-to-solid phase transition affects the growth of condensates remains largely unknown. In this study, we investigate the growth of peptide-RNA condensates, which behave as either liquidlike droplets or solidlike aggregates depending on the RNA sequences. Dynamic light scattering experiments show that solidlike condensates grow surprisingly faster, with their hydrodynamic diameters increasing over time as

d_{h} (t) \sim t^{1 / 2}

, contrasting with

d_{h} (t) \sim t^{1 / 3}

for liquidlike droplets. By combining theoretical analysis and simulations, we demonstrate that this accelerated growth is caused by the noncoalescence aggregation of solidlike condensates and thus formation of percolated swollen structures with a decreased fractal dimension. Moreover, we demonstrate that the accelerated growth can be slowed down by introducing agents that can revert solidlike condensates back to their liquidlike states, such as urea or specific RNAs. Together, our work reveals a fractal-dependent growth mechanism of condensates, with useful insights for understanding the aging of condensates and modulating their aggregation behaviors in synthetic and biological systems.

中文翻译：

类固体凝聚物的分形依赖性生长

液滴生长现象发生在各种工业和自然过程中。最近，细胞内液体状冷凝物的发现引发了人们对了解其生长行为的日益浓厚的兴趣。这些冷凝物表现出不同的材料特性，与许多细胞功能和疾病密切相关，特别是在从液态液滴到固态聚集体的相变过程中。然而，液-固相变如何影响冷凝物的生长仍然很大程度上未知。在这项研究中，我们研究了肽-RNA 缩合物的生长，根据 RNA 序列，其表现为液体状液滴或固体状聚集体。动态光散射实验表明，类固体凝聚物的生长速度惊人地快，其流体动力学直径随着时间的推移而增加

d_{h} (t) \sim t^{1 / 2}

，对比

d_{h} (t) \sim t^{1 / 3}

对于液体状的液滴。通过结合理论分析和模拟，我们证明这种加速增长是由类固体凝聚物的非聚结聚集引起的，从而形成了分形维数降低的渗透膨胀结构。此外，我们证明，通过引入可以将固体冷凝物恢复到液体状态的试剂（例如尿素或特定的RNA）可以减缓加速生长。总之，我们的工作揭示了凝聚物的分形依赖性生长机制，为理解凝聚物的老化和调节其在合成和生物系统中的聚集行为提供了有用的见解。

更新日期：2024-09-11

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