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Abstract
[...]when the instructors, cell biologist Tony Hyman and his postdoc, biophysicist Cliff Brangwynne, returned to their lab at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPICBG) in Dresden, Germany, they ran some more experiments: they stuck worm gonads filled with P granules between two thin plates of glass and slid the plates past each other. A year later, independent groups led by structural biologist Michael Rosen and biochemist Steven McKnight, both at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, studied collections ofproteins and RNA molecules in test tubes and found4,5 that the molecules were weakly attracted to each other, forming droplets and jelly-like blobs. Last year, biochemist Geeta Narlikar and her colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, reported15 that phase separation helps to mothball parts of the human genome that are perpetually inactive and serve mainly a structural function. Earlier this year, for example, a start-up founded by Ron Vale, a cell biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, received seed funding to search for drugs that break up RNA droplets associated with neurodegenerative conditions such as motor neuron disease and Huntington's disease.