Related papers: Computer simulations show that liquid-liquid phase…
Biomolecular condensates are complex droplets comprising diverse molecules that interact using various mechanisms. Condensation is often driven by short-ranged attraction, but net charges can also mediate long-ranged repulsion. Using…
Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…
Capsids of many viruses assemble around nucleic acids or other polymers. Understanding how the properties of the packaged polymer affect the assembly process could promote biomedical efforts to prevent viral assembly or nanomaterials…
Self-assembly is a vital part of the life cycle of certain icosahedral RNA viruses. Furthermore, the assembly process can be harnessed to make icosahedral virus-like particles (VLPs) from coat protein and RNA in vitro. Although much…
The cellular environment, characterized by its intricate composition and spatial organization, hosts a variety of organelles, ranging from membrane-bound ones to membraneless structures that are formed through liquid-liquid phase…
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,…
Cells operate in part by compartmentalizing chemical reactions. For example, recent work has shown that chromatin, the material that contains the cell's genome, can auto-regulate its structure by utilizing reaction products (proteins, RNA)…
Coarsening, the process where larger structures grow at the expense of smaller ones, is a fundamental aspect of multiphase systems. The cell cytoplasm exemplifies an out-of-equilibrium multiphase system, where phase-separated condensates…
Evidence accumulated over the past decade provides support for liquid-liquid phase separation as the mechanism underlying the formation of biomolecular condensates, which include not only membraneless organelles such as nucleoli and RNA…
The formation of a viral capsid -- the highly-ordered protein shell that surrounds the genome of a virus -- is the canonical example of self-assembly. The capsids of many positive-sense RNA viruses spontaneously assemble from in vitro…
Living organisms rely on molecular networks, such as gene circuits and signaling pathways, for information processing and robust decision-making in crowded, noisy environments. Recent advances show that interacting biomolecules…
Liquid-liquid phase separation, whereby two liquids spontaneously demix, is ubiquitous in industrial, environmental, and biological processes. While isotropic fluids are known to condense into spherical droplets in the binodal region, these…
The coat proteins of many viruses spontaneously form icosahedral capsids around nucleic acids or other polymers. Elucidating the role of the packaged polymer in capsid formation could promote biomedical efforts to block viral replication…
Liquid-liquid phase separation plays a major role in the formation and maintenance of various membrane-less subcellular structures in the cytoplasm and nucleus of cells. Biological condensates contain enhanced concentrations of proteins and…
Biomolecular condensates formed through the phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids are widely observed, offering a fundamental means of organizing intracellular materials in a membrane-less fashion. Traditionally, these condensates…
In living cells, proteins involved in specialized biochemical functions are often spatially organized within biomolecular condensates. Increasing evidence suggests that some of these condensates, including DNA repair condensates, emerge…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
While evaporating solvent is a widely used technique to assemble nano-sized objects into desired superstructures, there has been limited work on how the assembled structures are affected by the physical aspects of the process. We present…
We consider self-assembly of proteins into a virus capsid by the methods of molecular dynamics. The capsid corresponds either to SPMV or CCMV and is studied with and without the RNA molecule inside. The proteins are flexible and described…
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…