Regensburg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 26: Focus Session: Bioinspired Systems

BP 26.3: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 8. September 2022, 15:45–16:00, H15

Amphiphile-stabilized microemulsions formed from synthetic DNA-nanomotifs — Xenia Tschurikow¹, Mai Tran², Rakesh Chatterjee^3,4, Vasily Zaburdaev^3,4, Kerstin Göpfrich², and •Lennart Hilbert¹ — ¹Karlsruhe Institute of Technology — ²Max Planck Institute for Medical Research — ³Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen — ⁴Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin

DNA in the nuclei of pluripotent cells exhibits a unique, finely dispersed microdomain pattern. This pattern is formed from DNA and RNA, which behave as two separating phases, and is stabilized in a microemulsified configuration by amphiphiles forming at sites where DNA is transcribed into RNA. Here, we synthetically reproduce such an amphiphile-stabilised microemulsion using DNA oligo-based nanomotifs. Specifically, we implemented a droplet phase in the form of DNA-nanomotifs with three self-affine "sticky ends", to which we add amphiphile particles that additionally harbour negative charges that are repelled from DNA-dense droplets. We confirmed behaviors expected upon amphiphile addition in titration experiments, time-lapse microscopy, and by mapping the amphiphile distribution within droplets. We are currently carrying out lattice simulations with multi-ended particles, which explicitly capture the interaction rules that are encoded via the different DNA-nanomotif ends. Our work provides an avenue towards the model-guided design of more complex multi-phase systems, to reproduce, for instance, the multitude of nuclear bodies observed in biological cells.