Tools to quantify molecular tracks in vivo within Liquid-Liquid Phase-Separated condensates

Poster presented as part of the Crick BioImage Analysis Symposium.    

In soft matter biophysics, LLPS is a surprising effect in which a solution spontaneously demixes into droplets. In biology, there is mounting evidence that LLPS underpins both normal physiology (e.g., immune responses) and disease (e.g. cancer and neurodegeneration). I present two examples of LLPS from different biological kingdoms: pathogenic bacteria demonstrating antibiotic resistance and plants regulating their epigenetic response to winter cold in order to flower. However, due to the complex out-of-equilibrium dynamics involved, the underlying physical principles of biological LLPS are largely unknown. To gain a better understanding, we need specialised microscopy and post-processing tools that can observe and describe LLPS over a broad range of lengths and timescales.

I introduce an overview of our bespoke and open-source software tools to process specialized LLPS microscopy images: i) single-molecule tracking and ii) simulated collective fluorescent bleaching and recovery to extract the physics behind the biological phenomenon of membraneless droplets inside cells.

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