Multiphase artificial cells provide the opportunity to model various complex aspects of eukaryotic cells, including macromolecular crowding, compartmentalization, and localized reaction environments. This research has utilized both neutral polymer phase separation and complex coacervation to produce phase-separated cellular mimics. These aqueous solutions may be emulsified within a continuous oil phase in order to produce a large number of individual, non-interacting droplets, each of which acts as a single experimental instance. However, creating these emulsions by simple vortex mixing yields a heterogeneous population of droplets with a wide range of physical aspects, such as total volume, relative phase volume, and concentration of included solutes. Microfluidics provides a solution to this, giving much finer control over droplet formation. Emulsions produced via a constant microfluidic configuration consist of homogeneous droplets with uniform physical characteristics. Additionally, the morphology of the final droplet may be varied by changing the microfluidic parameters. This has been demonstrated with an aqueous two-phase system consisting of polyethylene glycol (PEG) and dextran, where the relative volume of the two phases within the final droplets may be controlled by adjusting the flow rates of the individual solutions. Furthermore, several different polyelectrolyte solutions were utilized to produce droplets in which phase separation could be induced via temperature shifts. These experiments also include several distinct continuous oil phases and a wide range of microfluidic settings. The control given by microfluidics in the production of these emulsion droplets represents a way to explore various physical phenomena present within biological systems in a thorough, variable way.

Multiphase water-in-oil emulsion droplets produced via microfluidics as artificial cells

256th National Meeting (2018)

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