Multicompartmental coacervate-based protocell by spontaneous droplet evaporation.

ABSTRACT: Hierarchical compartmentalization, a hallmark of both primitive and modern cells, enables the concentration and isolation of biomolecules, and facilitates spatial organization of biochemical reactions. Coacervate-based compartments can sequester and recruit a large variety of molecules, making it an attractive protocell model. In this work, we report the spontaneous formation of core-shell cell-sized coacervate-based compartments driven by spontaneous evaporation of a sessile droplet on a thin-oil-coated substrate. Our analysis reveals that such far-from-equilibrium architectures arise from multiple, coupled segregative and associative liquid-liquid phase separation, and are stabilized by stagnation points within the evaporating droplet. The formation of stagnation points results from conv

SUBMITTER: Qi C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10847435 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature