Issue 3, 2018

Reversible generation of coacervate droplets in an enzymatic network

Abstract

Cells can control the assembly and disassembly of membraneless organelles by enzymatic processes, but similar control has not been achieved in vitro yet. Here we develop ATP-based coacervate droplets as artificial membraneless organelles that can be fully controlled by two cooperating enzymes. Droplets can be generated within a minute following the addition of phosphoenolpyruvate as a substrate, and they can be dissolved within tens of seconds by adding glucose as the second substrate. We show how the rates of droplet generation and dissolution can be tuned by varying the enzyme and substrate concentrations, and we support our findings with a kinetic model of the underlying enzymatic reaction network. As all steps of the coacervate droplet life cycle, including nucleation, coarsening, and dissolution, occur under the same reaction conditions, the cycle can be repeated multiple times. In addition, by carefully balancing the rates of both enzymatic reactions, our system can be programmed to either form or dissolve droplets at specified times, acting as a chemical timer.

Graphical abstract: Reversible generation of coacervate droplets in an enzymatic network

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 Sep 2017
Accepted
03 Nov 2017
First published
04 Dec 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Soft Matter, 2018,14, 361-367

Reversible generation of coacervate droplets in an enzymatic network

K. K. Nakashima, J. F. Baaij and E. Spruijt, Soft Matter, 2018, 14, 361 DOI: 10.1039/C7SM01897E

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements