November 16th (Tuesday) Graduate Seminar / Professor Jeongmo Choi

Molecular Grammar of Biomolecular Phase Separation

In the last decade, there has been a growing interest on the phase behavior of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), especially after demonstration of its biological implications such as reversible formation/dissociation of membrane-less cellular organelles. Several model systems have been discovered and studied, and one of crucial questions in the field is how the phase behavior is encoded in a sequence. Focusing on a subset of IDPs that apparently exhibit a rather simple molecular grammar for phase behavior, I will summarize a recent work that leverages the so-called stickers-and-spacers framework adapted from the field of associative polymers for understanding how multivalent protein and RNA molecules drive phase transitions that give rise to biomolecular condensates.