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Phase Transitions in Biological Systems with Many Components

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Jacobs, William M 

Abstract

Biological mixtures such as the cytosol may consist of thousands of distinct components. There is now a substantial body of evidence showing that, under physiological conditions, intracellular mixtures can phase separate into spatially distinct regions with differing compositions. In this article we present numerical evidence indicating that such spontaneous compartmentalization exploits general features of the phase diagram of a multicomponent biomolecular mixture. In particular, we show that demixed domains are likely to segregate when the variance in the intermolecular interaction strengths exceeds a well-defined threshold. Multiple distinct phases are likely to become stable under very similar conditions, which can then be tuned to achieve multiphase coexistence. As a result, only minor adjustments to the composition of the cytosol or the strengths of the intermolecular interactions are needed to regulate the formation of different domains with specific compositions, implying that phase separation is a robust mechanism for creating spatial organization. We further predict that this functionality is only weakly affected by increasing the number of components in the system. Our model therefore suggests that, for purely physico-chemical reasons, biological mixtures are naturally poised to undergo a small number of demixing phase transitions.

Description

Keywords

Models, Biological, Monte Carlo Method, Phase Transition, Thermodynamics

Journal Title

Biophysical Journal

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0006-3495
1542-0086

Volume Title

112

Publisher

Elsevier
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/J018619/1)
European Research Council (227758)
W.M.J. acknowledges support from the Gates Cambridge Trust and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant No. DGE-1143678.