PHASE SEPARATION

It’s recently been shown that certain proteins spontaneously form micron-sized high-concentration granules and low-concentration surroundings in living cells, reminiscent of phase separation in physics. We found the physical state of granule nucleation or dissolution can promote or inhibit diseases such as cancer.

 

We follow individual protein granules with high spatiotemporal resolution and combine data-mining of entire human proteome and high-throughput imaging to understand the biophysics of protein granules such as the driving force for protein phase separation, nucleation kinetics, and the mesoscale structure through self-assembly.