Topological digestion drives time-varying rheology of entangled DNA fluids
D. Michieletto (),
P. Neill,
S. Weir,
D. Evans,
N. Crist,
V. A. Martinez and
R. M. Robertson-Anderson ()
Additional contact information
D. Michieletto: University of Edinburgh
P. Neill: University of San Diego
S. Weir: University of San Diego
D. Evans: University of Edinburgh
N. Crist: University of San Diego
V. A. Martinez: University of Edinburgh
R. M. Robertson-Anderson: University of San Diego
Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-13
Abstract:
Abstract Understanding and controlling the rheology of polymeric complex fluids that are pushed out-of-equilibrium is a fundamental problem in both industry and biology. For example, to package, repair, and replicate DNA, cells use enzymes to constantly manipulate DNA topology, length, and structure. Inspired by this feat, here we engineer and study DNA-based complex fluids that undergo enzymatically-driven topological and architectural alterations via restriction endonuclease (RE) reactions. We show that these systems display time-dependent rheological properties that depend on the concentrations and properties of the comprising DNA and REs. Through time-resolved microrheology experiments and Brownian Dynamics simulations, we show that conversion of supercoiled to linear DNA topology leads to a monotonic increase in viscosity. On the other hand, the viscosity of entangled linear DNA undergoing fragmentation displays a universal decrease that we rationalise using living polymer theory. Finally, to showcase the tunability of these behaviours, we design a DNA fluid that exhibits a time-dependent increase, followed by a temporally-gated decrease, of its viscosity. Our results present a class of polymeric fluids that leverage naturally occurring enzymes to drive diverse time-varying rheology by performing architectural alterations to the constituents.
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31828-w Abstract (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-31828-w
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31828-w
Access Statistics for this article
Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie
More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().