  Compartmentalization is ubiquitous in the broad cellular context, especially
in the formation of membraneless organelles (MOs). Membraneless organelles
(MOs) are phase-separated liquid compartments that provide spatiotemporal
control of biomolecules and metabolic activities inside a cell. While MOs
exhibit intriguing properties such as efficient compositional regulation,
thermodynamic metastability, environmental sensitivity and reversibility, their
formation is driven by weak non-covalent interactions derived from simple
motifs of intrinsic disordered proteins (IDPs). Understanding the natural
design of IDPs and the liquid-liquid phase separation behavior will not only
reveal insights about the contributions of MOs to cellular physiology and
disease pathology, but also provides inspirations for the de novo design of
dynamic biomolecules depots, self-regulated biochemical reactors, and
stimuli-responsive systems. In this article, the sequence and structural
features of IDPS that contribute to the organization of MOs are reviewed.
Artificial MOs formed following these principles, including self-assembling
peptides, synthetic IDPs, polyelectrolytes and peptide-polymer hybrids are
described. Finally, we illustrate the applications and discuss the potential of
the MO-inspired biomaterials, with examples spanning biochemical reactors,
synthetic biology, drug discovery and drug delivery.
