TY - JOUR T1 - Elasticity generates indissoluble biomolecular condensates JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2022.02.09.479808 SP - 2022.02.09.479808 AU - Lingyu Meng AU - Jie Lin Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/02/10/2022.02.09.479808.abstract N2 - While biomolecular condensates are often liquid-like, many experiments found that condensates also exhibit solid-like behaviors, which may make them irreversible and indissoluble. Despite the critical biological significance of indissoluble condensates to cellular fitness and diseases, the physical mechanisms underlying the stabilities of solid-like condensates are still unclear. In this work, we study the effects of elasticity on the dissolution of biomolecular condensates. We demonstrate that the bulk stress inside condensates may prevent the condensates from dissolution and obtain the new equilibrium conditions of elastic condensate: the osmotic pressure minus the bulk stress is uniform inside and outside condensates. To verify our theories, we simulate the two-fluid model in which the slow component corresponding to the polymer network generates elastic stress. Our theoretical predictions are nicely confirmed and independent of microscopic details. Moreover, we obtain a phase diagram on the stability of elastic condensates and identify a minimum bulk modulus for the condensates to be indissoluble, both numerically and theoretically. Our results may have implications in developing drugs targeting irreversible condensates.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -