Figure 5: RNA encodes physical properties via disparate free energy costs of conformational entropy penalties.

Synonymous mutations are designed and introduced to the WT mRNA to generate RNAs with polarized ensemble diversity. The low ensemble diversity RNA monomer samples a class of structures very similar to each other (top, green), which limits RNA-RNA interactions in the dense phase, but as a result, minimizes conformational entropy costs upon condensation. The high ensemble diversity RNA monomer samples a class of structures that greatly diverge from each other (bottom, purple), which lead to mesh-like RNA-RNA interactions in the dense phase and a high conformational entropy cost upon condensation.