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

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poster
posted on 2023-03-03, 14:18 authored by Alex L. Payne-Dwyer

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.

Permission has been given by authors to upload to Crick Figshare. Copyright remains with the original holders. 

Funding

Pushing proteins off DNA - how do helicases unwind protein-coated DNA?

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

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Biological physics of protein clustering in epigenetic memory and transcriptional control

UK Research and Innovation

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The York Physics of Pyrenoids Project (YP3): Nanostructured Biological LLPS:Next-Level-Complexity Physics of CO2-fixing Organelles

UK Research and Innovation

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