Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Self-organization of biomolecular condensates

Shibananda Das

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Biomolecular condensates are cellular compartments at the micron-scale composed of mostly intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and nucleic acids. These condensates lack surrounding membranes and are integral to diverse cellular processes, including RNA metabolism, DNA damage response, ribosome biogenesis. Liquid-liquid phase separation driven by multivalent macromolecular interactions has been established to be an important organizing principle of biomolecular condensates. I will present a simulation study that focuses on the formation of emergent structures from IDP molecules and RNA cofactors. In this study, we investigated the importance of electrostatic interactions and quantified the features of spontaneously formed microstructures using experimentally measurable quantities. Our finding highlights the need to incorporate features of microphase separation along with other mechanisms of macrophase separation and percolation to understand the phase behavior of constituent IDPs and RNAs, opening a new paradigm to understand the birth and structure of biomolecular condensates.