Multi-species phase separation of intrinsically disordered proteins in analytical and field-theoretic models

Biological condensates are now widely considered to be of fundamental biological, biomedical and biophysical importance. Numerous experimental studies suggest that bio-condensates like nucleolus, stress-granules, p-bodies etc. are physically underpinned to a significant degree by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of proteins driven by amino acid sequence pattern dependent multivalent interactions e.g. electrostatics, hydrophobicity, cation-Pi, Pi-Pi etc. The discovery of sequence dependent protein LLPS has led to the development of field-theoretic polymer physics models because mean field theories do not account fully for sequence specificity.