Congratulations to Guoming Gao on receiving a Rackham Research grant! Guoming's research involves the study of Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) is a biophysical model for membraneless organelles. It proposes that membraneless organelles form via a phase transition from a diluted liquid phase into a condensed liquid phase which then coexists with the former. The consensus in the field is that the multivalency of proteins and RNAs drives the biological LLPS, but what factors contribute to such multivalency is still unclear. His new project, supported by the Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant, proposes that charge-charge interactions between RNAs and enigmatic RNA binding sites (enigmRBSs, i.e., surface charge clusters) on proteins can either supplement or suppress the overall multivalency of a system, depending on the distribution of enigmRBSs on the protein. Both Molecular Dynamics simulations and in vitro translation-based LLPS assays, with single-molecule resolution on the initial stage of LLPS, will be used to test such hypotheses.
