Self-Assembly of Biomolecular Condensates with Shared Components

Biomolecular condensates self-assemble when proteins and nucleic acids spontaneously demix to form droplets within the crowded intracellular milieu. This simple mechanism underlies formation of a wide variety membraneless compartments in living cells. To understand how multiple with distinct compositions can such heterogeneous system, we study minimal model which "program" pairwise interactions among hundreds species. We show that number be reliably assembled grows superlinearly species mixture are allowed share components. Furthermore, predict maximum without knowing details interactions. Simulations condensate growth confirm these predictions suggest physical rules governing achievable complexity condensate-mediated spatial organization broadly applicable biomolecular mixtures.