Issue 4, 2023

Construction of multiphasic membraneless organelles towards spontaneous spatial segregation and directional flow of biochemical reactions

Abstract

Many intracellular membraneless organelles (MLOs) appear to adapt a hierarchical multicompartment organization for efficient coordination of highly complex reaction networks. Recapitulating such an internal architecture in biomimetic platforms is, therefore, an important step to facilitate the functional understanding of MLOs and to enable the design of advanced microreactors. Herein, we present a modular bottom-up approach for building synthetic multiphasic condensates using a set of engineered multivalent polymer–oligopeptide hybrids. These hybrid constructs exhibit dynamic phase separation behaviour generating membraneless droplets with a subdivided interior featuring distinct chemical and physical properties, whereby a range of functional biomolecules can be spontaneously enriched and spatially segregated. The platform also attains separated confinement of transcription and translation reactions in proximal compartments, while allowing inter-compartment communication via a directional flow of reactants. With advanced structural and functional features attained, this system can be of great value as a MLO model and as a cell-free system for multiplex chemical biosynthesis.

Graphical abstract: Construction of multiphasic membraneless organelles towards spontaneous spatial segregation and directional flow of biochemical reactions

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
29 sep 2022
Accepted
29 nov 2022
First published
13 jan 2023
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2023,14, 801-811

Construction of multiphasic membraneless organelles towards spontaneous spatial segregation and directional flow of biochemical reactions

F. Zhorabek, M. S. Abesekara, J. Liu, X. Dai, J. Huang and Y. Chau, Chem. Sci., 2023, 14, 801 DOI: 10.1039/D2SC05438H

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