Thermodynamic Driving Forces of Coacervate Nanoparticle Assembly

Synthetic and biological polymers that transport and deliver molecular cargoes in living systems self-organize, but multiple thermodynamic driving forces are often in play. Here we study tradeoffs between micelle formation and coacervation in a model copolymer system in an effort to determine the spatial organization of mRNA delivery nanoparticles. We use a fully fluctuating polymer field theory to simulate larger-scale behavior than is possible with particle-based methods.