Abstracts
Biomolecular condensates as membrane sculptors
Rumania Dimova
Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Am Mühlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam, Germany, rumiana.dimova@mpikg.mpg.de
Biomolecular condensates are important organizers of cellular biochemistry, yet their interactions with membranes remain underexplored. Because cells contain many membrane-bound compartments, encounters between condensates and membranes are unavoidable and can strongly impact cellular structure and function. Using giant unilamellar vesicles (10–100 µm) as a minimal model system, we examine how condensates adhere to, deform, and remodel lipid membranes [1–3]. We find that condensates can induce pronounced membrane shape changes [4], reorganize lipid distributions [5], initiate endocytosis-like events [6], and repair damaged membranes by sealing pores [7]. Membranes, in turn, actively regulate these interactions: lipid composition and packing strongly influence condensate affinity and wetting behavior [8]. Notably, we show that membrane affinity is not controlled by condensate hydrophobicity alone, but by the dielectric permittivity contrast between the condensate and the surrounding dilute phase [9]. Together, these results demonstrate how fundamental physicochemical principles, independent of active cellular processes or scaffolding proteins, can drive membrane remodeling and organization, and provide design rules for engineering synthetic cellular systems.
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2. Dimova & Lipowsky, Adv. Mater. Interfaces 4:1600451, 2017.
3. Liu et al., Front. Chem. 7:213, 2019.
4. Mangiarotti et al., Nature Commun. 14:2809, 2023.
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6. Mangiarotti, Aleksanyan et al., Adv. Sci. 11:2309864, 2024.
7. Bussi et al., Nature 623:1062, 2023.
8. Mangiarotti et al., Nature Commun. 16:2756, 2025.
9. Sabri et al., bioRxiv, doi:10.1101/2025.03.09.642144 (2025).