Simulation and Characterization of Pure RNA condensates

It is known that pure RNA systems phase separate both in vitro and within cells. Several neurological and neuromuscular disorders are related to RNA-based condensates. However, it is still challenging to characterize microscopic dynamics and morphology of RNA condensates. To investigate the biophysical principles governing RNA condensation, we have implemented and optimized a coarse-grained model for studying RNA structure and phase behavior. Our approach not only reproduces key experimental findings on RNA–RNA phase separation but importantly we achieve multifold speed up in the simulation time compared to the state-of-the-art. With this efficiency, we study the long-time dynamics of RNA condensates as well as its dependency on primary sequences. Our study reveals the relationship between RNA physicochemical features and RNA condensation. Collectively, our work helps shed important insights on the material properties of pure RNA condensates.