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…
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…
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…