Related papers: How do intrinsically disordered protein regions en…
Biomolecular condensates, physically underpinned to a significant extent by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), are now widely recognized by numerous experimental studies to be of fundamental biological, biomedical, and biophysical…
RNA-binding proteins form biomolecular condensates with RNA through phase separation, playing crucial roles in various cellular processes. While intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are key drivers of phase separation, additional factors…
Biological mixtures such as the cytosol may consist of thousands of distinct components. There is now a substantial body of evidence showing that, under physiological conditions, intracellular mixtures can phase separate into spatially…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is now recognized as a common mechanism for regulating enzyme activity in cells. Insights from studies in cells are complemented by in vitro studies aimed at developing better understanding of mechanisms…
In 1999 Wright and Dyson highlighted the fact that large sections of the proteome of all organisms are comprised of protein sequences that lack globular folded structures under physiological conditions. Since then the biophysics community…
Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) account for one-third of the human proteome and play essential biological roles. However, predicting the functions of IDRs remains a major challenge due to their lack of stable structures, rapid…
Spatially uniform electric fields have been used to induce instabilities in liquids and polymers, and to orient and deform ordered phases of block-copolymers. Here we discuss the demixing phase transition occurring in liquid mixtures when…
In living cells, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), such as FUS and DDX4, undergo phase separation, forming biomolecular condensates. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate their behavior in their respective homogenous…
Lipid rafts are heterogeneous dynamic lipid domains of the cell membranes that are involved in several biological processes, like protein and lipids specific transport and signaling. Our understanding of lipid raft formation is still…
Phase separation of various materials has been studied for one and a half centuries. In the last two decades, phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids has received enormous attention, due its relevance to cellular functions. However,…
Biomolecular phase separation is typically attributed to the polymer physics of long, disordered chains. However, the underlying chemical grammar, i.e. the specific interactions between protein and RNA building blocks, remains poorly…
Biomolecular condensates such as membraneless organelles, underpinned by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), are important for physiological function, with electrostatics -- among other interaction types -- being a prominent force in…
The sustenance of life depends on the high degree of organization that prevails through different levels of living organisms, from subcellular structures such as biomolecular complexes and organelles to tissues and organs. The physical…
Cell plasma membranes display a dramatically rich structural complexity characterized by functional sub-wavelength domains with specific lipid and protein composition. Under favorable experimental conditions, patterned morphologies can also…
Using a multi-phase field model, we examine how particle deformability, which is a proxy for cell stiffness, affects motility induced phase separation (MIPS). We show that purely repulsive deformable, i.e., squishy, cells phase separate…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
Biomembranes, which are mainly composed of neutral and charged lipids, exhibit a large variety of functional structures and dynamics. Here, we report a coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of the phase separation and…
The interaction of phase-separating systems with chemical reactions is of great interest in various contexts, from biology to material science. In biology, phase separation is thought to be the driving force behind the formation of…
Phase separation drives the formation of biomolecular condensates in cells, which comprise many components and sometimes possess multiple phases. The equilibrium physics of phase separation is well understood, but many components in…
Phase segregation, the process by which the components of a binary mixture spontaneously separate, is a key process in the evolution and design of many chemical, mechanical, and biological systems. In this work, we present a data-driven…