A quick intro to Phase Separation
Ink and water mix but oil and water don’t. We all know this. But why? Mixing and demixing are relevant processes for many different systems: from the air, you breathe to metallic alloys on your car wheels, and to the smoothie on your breakfast. Recent research shows that these processes also take place inside cells! Biomolecules can be mixed with the liquid interior of the cell. Sometimes these molecules demix and form droplets like oil in water. A mechanism to assemble these droplets is assembled through a process called Phase Separation. This video is a short introduction to the physics of Phase Separation.
Prepared by Mariona Esquerda Ciutat from the Hyman and Jülicher labs in Dresden.
Current news by our research groups
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…
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…
Filament formation by the translation factor eIF2B regulates protein synthesis in starved cells
Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRSs), the enzymes responsible for coupling tRNAs to their cognate amino acids, minimize translational errors by intrinsic hydrolytic editing. Here, we compared norvaline (Nva), a linear amino acid not coded for protein synthesis, to the proteinogenic, branched valine…
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: