6. April 2023
CD-Code is now published in Nature Methods
CD-CODE is now published in Nature Methods. It is a “living database” that we designed for fast addition and review of information about condensates and proteins and is open to users and expert researchers who would like to contribute. Join us and visit cd-code! CD code has been a…
30. November 2022
Molecular Assembly Lines in Active Droplets
Cells assemble structures that have lots of molecules. How can such complicated structures be reliably assembled? We propose that cells could be organizing an assembly line process for the construction. We show how this could be organized inside droplets. In this video we explain our recent…
30. November 2022
A quick intro to the Phase Diagram
Phase Diagrams are graphic representations that help understand many physical systems such as magnets and pure substances like water. These diagrams also help us understand how dense droplets of biomolecules, called Biomolecular Condensates, form inside cells. Phase Diagrams predict under which…
12. January 2022
A role for RNA in Stress Granules assembly
Stress granules are membraneless compartments formed by phase separation of specific molecules upon exposure to cellular stress such as oxidative stress, heat shock, or osmotic stress. The Alberti, Jahnel, Honigmann, and Hyman labs published a study in cell highlighting the role of RNA in the…
10. January 2022
Condensation regulates translation
New insights into the influence of Ded1p condensation on translation comes from the Hyman, Alberti and Kreysing labs. The study published in Cell is entitled "Condensation of Ded1p Promotes a Translational Switch from Housekeeping to Stress Protein Production". Graphical abstract: Abstract: Cells…
6. April 2021
The key role of solvent in condensation: Mapping water in liquid-liquid phase-separated FUS
What drives the formation of biomolecular condensates from proteins in water? The Adams group, in collaboration with colleagues from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, measured the thermodynamic forces leading to the expulsion of water from condensates as they form through protein-protein…
28. February 2021
The ALS-Associated FUS (P525L) Variant Does Not Directly Interfere with Microtubule-Dependent Kinesin-1 Motility
The Diez lab, in collaboration with the Hermann lab in Rostock, Germany, have utilised an in vitro microtubule gliding motility assay to study deficient intracellular transport in motor neurons. The findings exclude a role of mutations in the phase-separating FUS protein, known to be mutated in…
15. June 2020
Cytoskeletal organization through multivalent interactions
Stefan Diez and collaborators Zdenek Lansky and Marcus Braun from the Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic, published an Opinion article emphasizing the role of multivalent interactions cytoskeletal phenomena including (1) the generation of entropic forces by…
2. July 2019
Kinetically distinct phases of tau on microtubules regulate kinesin motors and severing enzymes
The Diez and Hyman labs, in collaboration with the Lansky and Braun lab at the Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic, published a study on the role of phase separation of the intrinsically disordered Tau protein in regulating the activity of motor proteins and…
5. September 2017
Local nucleation of microtubule bundles through tubulin concentration into a condensed tau phase
Theskeleton that supports the structure of our cells, termed cytoskeleton is formed of several kinds of polymers including actin and microtubules. How the single units on the polymers (monomers and dimers) are concentrated to gether to synthesize the polymer is the subject of this study by the labs…