TY - JOUR T1 - Intracellular production of hydrogels and synthetic RNA granules by multivalent enhancers JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/117572 SP - 117572 AU - Hideki Nakamura AU - Albert A. Lee AU - Ali Sobhi Afshar AU - Shigeki Watanabe AU - Elmer Rho AU - Shiva Razavi AU - Allison Suarez AU - Yu-Chun Lin AU - Makoto Tanigawa AU - Brian Huang AU - Robert DeRose AU - Diana Bobb AU - William Hong AU - Sandra B. Gabelli AU - John Goutsias AU - Takanari Inoue Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/16/117572.abstract N2 - Non-membrane bound, hydrogel-like entities, such as RNA granules, nucleate essential cellular functions through their unique physico-chemical properties. However, these intracellular hydrogels have not been as extensively studied as their extracellular counterparts, primarily due to technical challenges in probing these materials in situ. Here, by taking advantage of a chemically inducible dimerization paradigm, we developed iPOLYMER, a strategy for rapid induction of protein-based hydrogels inside living cells. A series of biochemical and biophysical characterizations, in conjunction with computational modeling, revealed that the polymer network formed in the cytosol resembles a physiological hydrogel-like entity that behaves as a size-dependent molecular sieve. We studied several properties of the gel and functionalized it with RNA binding motifs that sequester polyadenine-containing nucleotides to synthetically mimic RNA granules. Therefore, we here demonstrate that iPOLYMER presents a unique and powerful approach to synthetically reconstitute hydrogel-like structures including RNA granules in intact cells. ER -