(Part 1/2) Excited to share our recent work with Prof. Nicolas Fawzi’s group (nicolasluxfawzi.bsky.social), now out in Angewandte Chemie (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....)! We show how RNA reshapes FUS condensate assembly and dynamics. Congrats to Tongyin, Kandarp, Samara, Qizan, Priyesh!

(Part 1/2) Excited to share our latest paper (doi.org/10.1063/5.03...), led by PhD student Shuo-Lin Weng and Dr. Shiv Rekhi! We introduce buffered Charge-Regulation Monte Carlo method to model dynamic charge regulation, buffer equilibria, and ion partitioning within condensates.

The #bps2027 Biophysical Society Lecturer is Susan Marqusee, University of California, Berkeley. Don't miss her talk, "Touring the Energy Landscape" at the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia on Monday, February 22. See you there!

2027 Biophysical Society Lecture | Biophysical Society

University of California, Berkeley

buff.ly

New from Fawzi + @mittalgrouptamu.bsky.social labs led by Busra Ozguney and Ryan Puterbaugh. Methionine oxidation in both helical conserved region and disordered regions of TDP-43 C-terminal domain decreases phase separation by perturbing different sets of contacts www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Methionine oxidation alters both helical assembly and disordered contacts in human TDP-43 C-terminal domain phase separation | PNAS

TAR DNA binding protein 43 (TDP-43), a key protein linked to ALS pathology, undergoes phase separation and forms functional assemblies via condensa...

pnas.org

We show, in collaboration with Yifan Dai, that biomolecular condensates function as inherent catalysts. Interphase potentials give rise to electric fields at the interfaces of condensates that are tunable, strong enough to align substrates, & function as electro catalysts. doi.org/10.1016/j.mo...

Formative work on engineered RNA condensate.

Elisa Franco@francolab.bsky.social · 5mo ago

RNA is more than genetic information: it can be a tool for cellular architects. In our new paper, we engineer RNA motifs to physically reorganize intracellular space in living mammalian cells. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats to our talented postdoc @amirbitran.bsky.social for his first preprint in the lab, a collaboration with the Bustamante lab, studying time-resolved protein folding during translation elongation with HDX-MS! Check out the attached manuscript and tutorial for more:

Amir Bitran@amirbitran.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I am delighted to share that my newest manuscript and the first of my postdoc in the Marqusee and Bustamante labs, “A detailed molecular picture of protein folding during active translation”, is now on the BioRXiv! (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our new preprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social, led by @katsuminami.bsky.social‬ et al.! 🎉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Machine learning-assisted Repli-Histo labeling and single-nucleosome imaging reveal distinct transcription-dependent chromatin constraints across euchromatin and heterochromatin.

Thank you Biopatrika for featuring our study.

BioPatrika@biopatrika.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#researcherspotlight Souradip Paul from Dr Krishnananda Chattopadhyay lab at Indian Institute of Chemical Biology talks about his work on "Protoporphyrin IX regulates the phase separation behavior of α-Synuclein" ACS Publications biopatrika.com/academia/res... @biopatrika @indiasouradip.bsky.social

(1/n) Very excited to share tri-lab collab (Mirny & Zechner) led by Harvey, Henrik & Jack: Q: How do enhancers & promoters interact in space (contact vs. action-at-a-distance) and time (stable vs. transient)? A: Transient E-P contact (~25-42 nm lasting ~10-20 sec): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Finally out in @Cellcellpress! Proteins with long IDRs are prone to misfolding during protein synthesis. This is prevented by mRNA 3′UTRs that act as mRNA-based IDR chaperones. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

mRNA 3′ UTRs chaperone intrinsically disordered regions to control protein activity

Highly conserved mRNA 3′ UTRs act as co-translational chaperones for intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), preventing inter-domain misfolding and enabling biogenesis of fully active proteins.

cell.com

Thrilled to see our Deep-Phase paper now online in @cellcellpress.bsky.social! 🎉 The final version expands Deep-Phase across labeling modalities, adds dual-condensate imaging to dissect pathway specificity, and shows greater robustness to batch effects than classical image-analysis methods.

Deep learning of functional perturbations from condensate morphology

A deep learning method quantitatively decodes nucleolar, nuclear speckle, and viral condensate morphology to reveal underlying biochemical states. Applying this framework reveals a previously unrecogn...

cell.com

LLOMe has long been used to study lysosomal damage, yet how it works has remained a mystery. Using cryo-electron tomography, we show it forms amyloid structures inside lysosomes that mechanically rupture membranes – revealing a new paradigm for lysosomal failure. 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/202... #CryoET

Our new preprint! 🧬✨ www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... @ynagata.bsky.social et al. combined single-nucleosome imaging with Fucci probes to follow local chromatin behavior during interphase. Local nucleosome motion stays nearly constant from G1 to G2, except in early G1. Thanks to all coauthors!

Our latest paper is online. www.nature.com/articles/s41... We expanded the speed-optimized DNA-PAINT sequences from 6 to 12 — enabling faster, higher-resolution multiplexed super-resolution imaging of up to 10 cellular targets. Here's the story. 1/n

High-speed multiplexed DNA-PAINT imaging of nuclear organization using an expanded sequence repertoire - Nature Communications

Banerjee, Anand, and colleagues present an expanded speed-optimized DNA-PAINT sequence repertoire. This repertoire allows for improved multiplexing capability in super-resolution imaging, maintaining ...

nature.com

Our H1 paper is out #ScienceAdvances: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @masaashimazoe.bsky.social et al. reveal that linker histone H1 acts as a liquid-like glue to organize chromatin in live cells. 🎉 Fantastic collab with @rcollepardo.bsky.social @janhuemar.bsky.social and others—huge thanks! 🙌 1/

Our latest @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: "Prion-like transmission of human tau strains in the mouse brain" 🥳 With Michel Goedert and Masato Hasegawa. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

DNA-PAINT with photocaged DNA labels = PhotoPAINT🔬. Why? No need for washing or mixing 👉🏻 higher accuracy in DNA-PAINT & other super-res methods. Fantastic collab with Alex Heckel & driven by the 'magic team' Nina Kaltenschnee and Marina Dietz 💪 doi.org/10.1002/anie... @goetheuni.bsky.social

Heilemann Lab@heilemannlab.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🔬we have been playing with 'an old tool from (DNA) chemistry' 🧪 and used that for DNA-based confocal/super-res microscopy ... these are the last recordings for the revision and were recorded last night ... 🙏 thanks to R1 for this suggestion:

Our work on how oligomerization can enable selectively targeting intrinsic disorder with small molecules is now out in Science Advances: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). Congratulations Stase Bielskute and @borjaml.bsky.social and thanks to the collaborators and funders !

Oligomerization enables the selective targeting of an intrinsically disordered region by a small molecule

The druggability of intrinsically disordered regions.

science.org

I’m thrilled to share that my PhD work has been just published in Cell. After a long and bumpy ride, we uncovered the core function of nuclear speckles -splicing of GC-levelled exons- and traced the evolution of this gene architecture and condensates themselves to amniotes.

Tugce Aktas@aktast.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Our most recent work on the “function and evolution” of #nuclear-speckles is now online at Cell @cp-cell.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... Read the thread👇 for the highlights of our findings.

We are excited to share our new preprint which is now available to read on biorXiv: doi.org/10.64898/202... 🎉🎉🎉

Our "Roadmap for Condensates in Cell Biology" is now available on arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2601.03677 🎉 This article summarizes the interdisciplinary weekly discussions we had at our condensate workshop at KITP in the summer of 2025. Feedback is very welcome!

Roadmap for Condensates in Cell Biology

Biomolecular condensates govern essential cellular processes yet elude description by traditional equilibrium models. This roadmap, distilled from structured discussions at a workshop and reflecting t...

arxiv.org

Is euchromatin really “open”? Our new study @bioRxiv suggests otherwise. Using super-resolution imaging @shiori-iida.bsky.social‬ @masaashimazoe.bsky.social reveals: Euchromatin forms condensed domains in live cells. Cohesin constrains them and prevents domain mixing. www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Our review on the physics of phase separation in cells has been published by Rep. Prog. Phys. 🎉 doi.org/10.1088/1361... We hope that the text and citations are helpful for anyone interested in physical descriptions of condensates in cells!

Zwicker Group@zwickergroup.bsky.social · 2y ago

We wrote a review on the "Physics of droplet regulation in biological cells": arxiv.org/abs/2501.13639 Beside the basic #physics of phase separation, we discuss three aspects that separate cellular from traditional droplets: