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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 50: Focus Session: Wetting on Adaptive Substrates III (joint session CPP/DY/O)
CPP 50.10: Talk
Friday, March 22, 2024, 12:30–12:45, H 0110
Intracellular wetting between biomembranes and liquid-like condensates — •Lukas Hauer1, Katharina Sprobeck1, Amir Houshang Bahrami2,3, and Roland L. Knorr1,4 — 1Humboldt Univeristät zu Berlin — 2Bilkent University, Ankara — 3MPI-DS, Göttingen — 4University of Tokyo
Wetting has been recently identified as physiologically important in fundamental cellular processes: phase-separated condensates (e.g., proteins and RNA) form liquid droplets in cells and interact with membranes, e.g., during autophagy in eukaryotic cells or protein storage in plant vacuoles. Upon contact, the droplets can exert wetting forces on the membrane that deforms. This creates a competition of mechanical forces of the membrane elasticity and the droplet capillarity, giving rise to elastocapillary phenomena. In this talk, I will present a minimal model system comprising giant lamellar vesicles (GUVs) filled with aqueous phase-separating polymers(PEG/Dextran). We create liquid-liquid interfaces inside GUVs by osmotic quenches, yielding deformed vesicles with excess membrane area. The excess membrane accumulates at the liquid-liquid interface and assumes differing morphologies, ranging from micro-tubules to sheets, to stomatocytes. We find that the morphology transition depends on the liquid-liquid surface tension. Our results will help to explain resembling in vivo observations during the morphogenesis of protein storage vacuoles in plants.
Keywords: Wetting; Liquid-liquid phase separation; Membranes; Elastocapillarity; Fluid–structure interaction