Droplets, droplets everywhere…cell organization by liquid-liquid phase separation.

Air date: May 26, 2021
Runtime: 01 :00 :13
Description: Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series
Dr. Rosen is chair of the Department of Biophysics at UT Southwestern Medical Center, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and member of the National Academy of Sciences. The focus of his research is to understand how cells stay organized. This entails the study of enigmatic compartments within a cell, called biomolecular condensates, which concentrate proteins and nucleic acids without a surrounding membrane.
These structures are involved in diverse cellular processes from RNA metabolism to signal transduction.
Biomolecular condensates are two- and three-dimensional compartments in eukaryotic cells that concentrate specific collections of proteins and nucleic acids without an encapsulating membrane. Many condensates behave as dynamic liquids and are believed to form through liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) driven by interactions between multivalent constituents. While we understand much about the physical mechanisms that promote and regulate LLPS, we know less about the biochemical functions that arise from this process, and many roles of LLPS in biology remain to be discovered. In my talk I will explain how my lab began our work on biological LLPS, and then discuss how assembly of two distinct signaling cascades into condensates causes modulation of their biochemical activities. Finally, I will discuss a new direction in the lab focused on understanding how chromatin may be organized by LLPS, and dynamically regulated by various remodeling machineries. These behaviors may contribute to formation of functionally distinct compartments in the eukaryotic nucleus, which are important to processes that include gene regulation and DNA repair.
For more information go to oir.nih.gov/wals
Author: Michael K. Rosen, Ph.D., University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
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