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- Title
The material properties of a bacterial-derived biomolecular condensate tune biological function in natural and synthetic systems.
- Authors
Lasker, Keren; Boeynaems, Steven; Lam, Vinson; Scholl, Daniel; Stainton, Emma; Briner, Adam; Jacquemyn, Maarten; Daelemans, Dirk; Deniz, Ashok; Villa, Elizabeth; Holehouse, Alex S.; Gitler, Aaron D.; Shapiro, Lucy
- Abstract
Intracellular phase separation is emerging as a universal principle for organizing biochemical reactions in time and space. It remains incompletely resolved how biological function is encoded in these assemblies and whether this depends on their material state. The conserved intrinsically disordered protein PopZ forms condensates at the poles of the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus, which in turn orchestrate cell-cycle regulating signaling cascades. Here we show that the material properties of these condensates are determined by a balance between attractive and repulsive forces mediated by a helical oligomerization domain and an expanded disordered region, respectively. A series of PopZ mutants disrupting this balance results in condensates that span the material properties spectrum, from liquid to solid. A narrow range of condensate material properties supports proper cell division, linking emergent properties to organismal fitness. We use these insights to repurpose PopZ as a modular platform for generating tunable synthetic condensates in human cells. "Intracellular phase separation is emerging as a universal principle for organizing biochemical reactions in time and space. Here the authors show that PopZ condensate dynamics support cell division and using PopZ modular architecture, the tunable PopTag platform was developed to enable designer condensates."
- Subjects
GAS condensate reservoirs; CAULOBACTER crescentus; PHASE separation; CELL division; SYNTHETIC biology; OLIGOMERIZATION
- Publication
Nature Communications, 2022, Vol 13, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
2041-1723
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41467-022-33221-z