Stephan Grill, MPI-CBG Director and supervisor of thesis project A5 in the RTG 3120, has been awarded 2,5 million euros from the European Research Council as part of the Advanced Grants call for the duration of 5 years to fund the project SDSF: “DNA Sequence-Dependent Structure Formation in the Cell Nucleus”

This project “connects biology with physics and theory with experiment, aiming to build a physical theory of genome organization across scales. It will bring an understanding of how DNA sequences control structure formation processes inside the cell nucleus, with broad implications for development and disease.”, according to the MPI-CBG Website.

The ERC-funded project complements the RTG-funded project A5 which aims to understand how condensates respond to mechanical forces and how condensate-mediated capillary forces influence the shape and organization of biopolymers. It will lay the groundwork for the ERC project. Project A5 is currently still recruiting a PhD candidate. click to apply.

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The results of this study offer a framework for designing synthetic condensates with tunable phase behaviors.

Citation:

Zhouyi He, Jens-Uwe Sommer, and Tyler S. Harmon. Impact of Coiled-Coil Domains on the Phase Behavior of Biomolecular Condensates. ACS Macro Letters 2025 14 (4), 413-419. DOI: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.4c00821

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1. https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/newsportal/news/dfg-foerdert-neues-graduiertenkolleg-zur-erforschung-biomolekularer-kondensate-in-dresden
2. https://www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreach/news-media/article/new-research-training-group-for-biomolecular-condensates-in-dresden

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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 hydrophilic materials. Also, we illustrate with examples how the physics of wetting helps understand biological features in cells!

Prepared by Mariona Esquerda Ciutat from the Hyman and Jülicher labs in Dresden.

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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 equilibrium by minimising the Free Energy. We will see that asking if a mixture will phase-separate or not is the same as asking what is the minimum energy allowed for the mixture. Not only that, but we will also show how the Binodal line on the Phase Diagram directly emerges from the Free Energy!

Prepared by Mariona Esquerda Ciutat from the Hyman and Jülicher labs in Dresden.

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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 work published in PRL. Check out the paper for more info: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract…

Prepared by Mariona Esquerda Ciutat from the Hyman and Jülicher labs in Dresden.

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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 conditions these condensates can form and also what will be their molecular concentration. Watch this quick intro to learn more! References: -Video C. Elegans: Fritsch, Diaz-Delgadillo, Adame-Arana et al., PNAS (2021) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas… -Multicomponent Phase Diagram: Bauerman, Laha, McCall, and Weber JACS (2022) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/…

Prepared by Mariona Esquerda Ciutat from the Hyman and Jülicher labs in Dresden.

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In schoolbooks, cells are generally pictured as a membrane bubble full of smaller compartments also wrapped by a membrane. In reality, things differ from this simple picture. There are many compartments that are not bound by a membrane. Learn what they are and their amazing properties in this 2 minute video!

Prepared by Mariona Esquerda Ciutat from the Hyman and Jülicher labs in Dresden.

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