Soft Matter Seminar: Prof. Jennifer McManus

Research interests: Protein and Peptide Self-Assembly, Biological Physics, Synthetic Biology

Abstract: Protein phase transitions in biology are associated with disease pathogenesis, for example in cataract disease or sickle cell anaemia, but they also occur as part of normal biological processes, such as liquid-liquid phase separation in cells. While protein phase behaviour has been understood from a physics perspective for globular proteins for some time, how we can apply what we already know to biomolecular condensation, or the phase transitions of other protein types is less clear. In my talk, I’ll briefly review what we understand about the phase transitions of globular proteins and then present recent results on the phase behaviour of membrane proteins and the rational design of de novo proteins to undergo liquid-liquid phase separation in cells. I’ll highlight what common features exist between these different protein types and how this might be important for biomolecular condensation in cells.