Single-droplet surface-enhanced Raman scattering decodes the molecular determinants of liquid-liquid phase separation

Anamika Avni, Ashish Joshi, Anuja Walimbe, Swastik G. Pattanashetty and Samrat Mukhopadhyay ()
Additional contact information
Anamika Avni: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali
Ashish Joshi: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali
Anuja Walimbe: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali
Swastik G. Pattanashetty: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali
Samrat Mukhopadhyay: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Biomolecular condensates formed via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) are involved in a myriad of critical cellular functions and debilitating neurodegenerative diseases. Elucidating the role of intrinsic disorder and conformational heterogeneity of intrinsically disordered proteins/regions (IDPs/IDRs) in these phase-separated membrane-less organelles is crucial to understanding the mechanism of formation and regulation of biomolecular condensates. Here we introduce a unique single-droplet surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) methodology that utilizes surface-engineered, plasmonic, metal nanoparticles to unveil the inner workings of mesoscopic liquid droplets of Fused in Sarcoma (FUS) in the absence and presence of RNA. These highly sensitive measurements offer unprecedented sensitivity to capture the crucial interactions, conformational heterogeneity, and structural distributions within the condensed phase in a droplet-by-droplet manner. Such an ultra-sensitive single-droplet vibrational methodology can serve as a potent tool to decipher the key molecular drivers of biological phase transitions of a wide range of biomolecular condensates involved in physiology and disease.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32143-0 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_s41467-022-32143-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32143-0

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 ().