The 5th Annual Robert D. Goldman Lecture
Cell Organization by Liquid-Liquid Phase
Cosponsored by Walter S. And Lucienne Driskill Graduate Program Lectures in Life Sciences and Feinberg School of Medicine Department of Cell & Developmental Biology
Michael K Rosen, PhD
Professor and Mar Nell and F. Andrew Bell Distinguished Chair
Department of Biophysics
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Biomolecular condensates are two- and three-dimensional cellular compartments that concentrate specific collections of proteins and nucleic acids without an encapsulating membrane. Many condensates behave as dynamic, viscoelastic liquids, and appear to form through liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) driven by interactions between multivalent constituents. In my talk I will discuss our early studies of actin regulatory signaling proteins. These explained how condensates can dynamically form and dissolve in response to upstream signals and how condensation itself can control biochemical activity. I will also discuss our more recent work to understand how phase separation may contribute to the organization of chromatin in the eukaryotic cell nucleus. The ability to observe individual nucleosomes in cryo-electron tomography images of chromatin condensates has allowed us to understand how nanometer-scale molecular structure ultimately translates to micrometer-scale organization of the condensate interior. We have also found that mammalian nuclei contain dense clusters of nucleosomes whose arrangement is mirrored by the reconstituted condensates. These studies suggest how nucleosome positioning may control the organization and dynamics of chromatin in cells.
About the Annual Robert D. Goldman, PhD Lecture:
Robert D. Goldman, PhD, is the Stephen Walter Ranson Professor Emeritus of Cell and Developmental Biology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, where he served as chair of the department from 1981-2019. Dr. Goldman earned his doctorate in biology from Princeton University, after which he trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Hammersmith Hospital in London and at the MRC Institute of Virology in Glasgow. He was appointed assistant professor of Biology at Case Western Reserve University in 1969 and moved to Carnegie Mellon University in 1977, prior to joining the faculty at Northwestern.
The annual lecture commemorates the accomplishments of Dr. Goldman and are a celebration of science and innovative discoveries in cell and developmental biology.
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Cell & Developmental Biology Department
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