Abstract supplied by presenter: Proteins containing disordered segments can phase separate and associate with other cell components such as RNA to form membraneless organelles. Membraneless organelles participate in important cellular functions such as transcriptional repression and mRNA degradation. Understanding the composition, cellular localization, the types of molecular interactions within membrane organelles, and the process that promotes and regulates phase separation offers many benefits in cellular biology. For example, cellular features of membraneless organelles could be mimicked in order to investigate a cellular process of choice in vitro and then apply findings in cellular context. The seminar will discuss a recent study that offers insights into understanding the formation of membranelless organelles. The research group investigates the self-assembly mechanisms of a well-characterized model protein and designs a system that they use to induce and regulate phase separation in vitro and in vivo. Broadly, this recent work establishes novel approaches that could elucidate mechanistic understandings of phase separation and potentially other cellular processes from a synthetic biology point of view.
Originally published at chemistry.nd.edu.