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…
18. August 2020
PhD Student (m/f/d)
Project Title Supra-molecular organisation of cell-cell interfaces via protein and lipid mediated phase separation Brief summary Establishment and segregation of cellular junctions into mesoscale membrane domains underlies emergence of epithelial tissue morphology and function. We aim to understand…
19. September 2023
A quick intro to the Physics of Wetting
Water forms droplets on the surface of a leaf but it spreads and completely wets the skin of a snail. Why does water behave so differently on the two surfaces? In this video, we introduce the fundamental concepts of surface tension, contact angle and the difference between hydrophobic and…
8. August 2023
How Protein Condensates Age
Protein condensates are dense droplets of proteins that organise the interior of the cell. Curiously, they age, meaning their physical properties such as viscosity change over time. In our paper "Theory of rheology and aging of protein condensates" published in PRX Life, we study how…
31. May 2023
Diving into the Free Energy: Part 1
Get ready to dive into the Free Energy! Cells can be described as systems made of different phases. For instance, biomolecular condensates are dense droplets of proteins that coexist with the rest of the cytoplasm. Thermodynamics is a helpful theoretical framework to understand phases in…
31. May 2023
Diving into the Free Energy: Part 2
Get ready to dive into the Free Energy! If we want to understand phases in cells we need to talk about the Free Energy of a thermodynamic system. This is the second part of the video “Diving into the Free Energy”. In this video, we will understand how thermodynamic mixtures reach…
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…
24. February 2023
How do single molecules move in and out of condensates?
Cells organize their interior into functional compartments, some without an enclosing membrane. These dense liquid droplets of biomolecules coexist with the surrounding environment like oil drops in water constantly exchanging material with it. How is the random movement of single…
15. February 2023
A quick intro to Complexity
The Earth, which once was a messy ball of melted rock, is now teeming with complex living creatures extraordinarily adapted to their ecosystem. But the second law of thermodynamics tells us that systems spontaneously tend towards disorder and structures states, just like milk tends to mix with…
2. February 2023
A quick intro to Irreversibility
Have you ever seen a movie backwards in time? How did you figure out that the time was flowing backwards? This could seem a silly question. But think about it. It strongly depends on the what process the movie was showing! If you see many pieces of broken glass coming together from different…