Shana Elbaum-Garfinkle, Assistant Professor, Program in Biochemistry, CUNY ASRC Structural Biology Initiative, The Graduate Center, will be giving a seminar titled "Tunable properties and dynamics of biomolecular condensates."

Zoom link: https://gc-cuny.zoom.us/j/91637964386. Meeting ID: 91637964386. Pass code: asrc+ccny

ABSTRACT

Biomolecules, including proteins and nucleic acids, can self-assemble into materials with an incredible range of physical properties exquisitely tied to their physiological function – from the fluidity of dynamic membraneless organelles, to the elasticity of elastin fibers in the heart and lungs. Despite their functional significance, there remain substantial gaps in understanding how individual proteins and/or nucleic acids come together on the molecular scale to produce unique properties on the material mesoscale. Here, we leverage rheological and quantitative fluorescence approaches to extract fundamental principles governing protein self-assembly into “condensates” with unique viscoelastic properties, dynamics and hierarchical organization. Utilizing reductionist model polymer systems, we specifically focus here on examining how arginine and lysine residues, and their post-translational modifications, contribute to unique material properties and architectures. This work lends mechanistic insight into the growing number of arginine/lysine rich phase separating protein domains implicated in a vast set of biological processes.