A bending rigidity parameter for stress granule condensates

Law, Jack O.; Jones, Carl M.; Stevenson, Thomas; Williamson, Thomas A.; Turner, Matthew S.; Kusumaatmaja, Halim; Grellscheid, Sushma N.

Abstract

Interfacial tension plays an important role in governing the dynamics of droplet coalescence and determining how condensates interact with and deform lipid membranes and biological filaments. We demonstrate that an interfacial tension-only model is inadequate for describing stress granules in live cells. Harnessing a high-throughput flicker spectroscopy pipeline to analyze the shape fluctuations of tens of thousands of stress granules, we find that the measured fluctuation spectra require an additional contribution, which we attribute to elastic bending deformation. We also show that stress granules have an irregular, nonspherical base shape. These results suggest that stress granules are viscoelastic droplets with a structured interface, rather than simple Newtonian liquids. Furthermore, we observe that the measured interfacial tensions and bending rigidities span a range of several orders of magnitude. Hence, different types of stress granules (and more generally, other biomolecular condensates) can only be differentiated via large-scale surveys.

Citation

Law, J. O., Jones, C. M., Stevenson, T., Williamson, T. A., Turner, M. S., Kusumaatmaja, H., & Grellscheid, S. N. (2023). A bending rigidity parameter for stress granule condensates. Science Advances, 9(20), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adg0432

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 12, 2023
• Online Publication Date: May 17, 2023
• Publication Date: May 19, 2023
• Deposit Date: Sep 4, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 4, 2023
• Journal: Science Advances
• Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 20
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adg0432
• Keywords: Multidisciplinary
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1728911