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You are here: Home / A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life| Quanta Magazine

A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life| Quanta Magazine

Published on January 11, 2021
A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life| Quanta Magazine
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Biomolecular condensates “are changing our fundamental understanding of how cells work.” They were first observed and described in the MBL Physiology course.

By Viviane Callier

Imagine packing all the people in the world into the Great Salt Lake in Utah — all of us jammed shoulder to shoulder, yet also charging past one another at insanely high speeds. That gives you some idea of how densely crowded the 5 billion proteins in a typical cell are, said Anthony Hyman, a British cell biologist and a director of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden.

Somehow in that bustling cytoplasm, enzymes need to find their substrates, and signaling molecules need to find their receptors, so the cell can carry out the work of growing, dividing and surviving. If cells were sloshing bags of evenly mixed cytoplasm, that would be difficult to achieve. But they are not. Membrane-bounded organelles help to organize some of the contents, usefully compartmentalizing sets of materials and providing surfaces that enable important processes, such as the production of ATP, the biochemical fuel of cells. But, as scientists are still only beginning to appreciate, they are only one source of order. …  These discoveries are changing our fundamental understanding of how cells work. Read more …

Source: Molecular Condensates in Cells May Hold Keys to Life’s Regulation | Quanta Magazine

Posted in MBL in the News | Tagged als, alzheimer’s disease, amino acids, anthony hyman, atp, balbiani bodies, berkeley, biocondensates, Biology, chromatin, cliff brangwynne, condensates, condensation, droplets, enzymes, fungi, gary karpen, gene expression, gene regulation, greg jedd, heterochromatin, hydrotropes, intrinsic disorder, intrinsically disordered proteins, lindsay case, Marine Biological Laboratory, materials science, max planck institute for cell biology and genetics, mcgill university, membraneless organelles, microtubules, mike rosen, mitotic spindles, molecular biology, national university of singapore, neurospora, nucleolus, nucleus, oligomerization, oligomers, parkinson’s disease, polymerization, Princeton University, Proteins, ribosomes, rna, rna polymerase, rohit pappu, stephanie weber, tau protein, temasek life sciences laboratory, tubulin, university of california, University of Cambridge, university of texas southwestern medical center, via bookmarklet, washington university in st. louis

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