Vacuole dynamics and popping-based motility in liquid droplets of DNA

Liquid droplets of biomolecules play key roles in organizing cellular behavior and are also technologically relevant, yet physical studies of dynamic processes of such droplets have generally been lacking. Here, we investigate and quantify the dynamics of formation of dilute internal inclusions, i.e. vacuoles, within a model system consisting of liquid droplets of DNA `nanostar' particles. When acted upon by DNA-cleaving restriction enzymes, these DNA droplets exhibit cycles of appearance, growth, and bursting of internal vacuoles. Analysis of vacuole growth shows their radius increases linearly in time. Further, vacuoles pop upon reaching the droplet interface, leading to droplet motion driven by the osmotic pressure of restriction fragments captured in the vacuole. We develop a model that accounts for the linear nature of vacuole growth, and the pressures associated with motility, by describing the dynamics of diffusing restriction fragments. The results illustrate the complex non-equ..., Dataset collection is described fully in the associated paper., This data repository contains an example of image analysis code that is used to measure droplet and vacuole radii in the associated paper, \"Vacuole Dynamics and Popping-based Motility in Liquid Droplets of DNA,\" by Saleh et al.
The repository contains:-An example image of a droplet containing a vacuole (this image is shown in Fig. 2A of the paper)
-Code carrying out an example image-analysis calculation, using Mathemetica, and following principles described in the paper and its supplement. The code is fully commented on and referenced to relevant equations in the paper
-The same Mathematica code, but uploaded as a pdf for accessibility.