Arrested coarsening, oscillations, and memory from a conserved phase separating nucleator in a self-straining cytoskeletal network

Abstract

How do phase separated cellular structures set their size? To elucidate this, we study the dynamics and steady states of a phase separating nucleator that is advected by the self-straining cytoskeletal network which it nucleates. We find (i) that the interplay between transport and the tendency of nucleators to phase separate arrests coarsening; (ii) that the system undergoes damped oscillations towards a patterned steady state with a well defined length scale; (iii) that the system supports a spectrum of patterned states of different steady length scales, enabling the retention of a mechano-chemical memory of the initial conditions. Together, our findings establish a physiologically plausible compound material made of the phase separating nucleator and the self-straining network as a paradigm for mechano-chemical scale selection and memory fixation in cells.