Research Focus
Research in the center focuses on three areas: condensates in physiology, condensates in diseases, and condensate engineering. A technical core supports this research by developing cutting-edge tools to monitor, probe, and manipulate condensates.
Niche 1: Condensates in Physiology
- To understand how emergent properties regulate function across scales (Seth Childers, Jay Xiaojun Tan, Jeff Brodsky, Robin Lee, John Woolford, Bokai Zhu, Jonathan Henninger)
- To better define the physical, chemical, and biological principles underlying condensate formation, maintenance, and dissolution (Huaiying Zhang, Jay Xiaojun Tan, Jonathan Henninger, Seth Childers, Matthew Wohlever)
- To understand the role of nucleic acids in condensate biology (Bruce Armitage, Jonathan Henninger, John Woolford, James Schneider, Huaiying Zhang, Bokai Zhu)
Niche 2: Condensates in Disease
- To translate discoveries from basic research to condensate-associated diseases through the use of various models including patient derived cells and animal model: Ro (Huaiying Zhang, Bruce Armitage, Seth Childers, Jay Xiaojun Tan, Matthew Wohlever, Robin Lee, Jeffrey Brodsky, Bokai Zhu, Jonathan Henninger)
- Developing small molecules to target aberrant biomolecular condensates for disease management (Bokai Zhu, Huaiying Zhang)
- Diseases investigated include Cancer (Huaiying Zhang, Jay Xiaojun Tan, Robin Lee), Neurological disorders (Matthew Wohlever, Jeffrey Brodsky, Bokai Zhu), Inflammatory disorder (Robin Lee), Blood disorders (Jonathan Henninger), Kidney dysfunction (Arohan Subramanya), Microbes, antibody resistance and dormancy (Seth Childers)
Niche 3: Condensate Engineering
- To engineer biological condensates for biomanufacturing and medical applications (Derin Sevenler, Huaiying Zhang, Bruce Armitage, Seth Childers, Jose Lugo-Martinez, James Schneider)
- To use design condensates as assembly factories (Derin Sevenler)
- Synthetic condensates to study condensate assembly, sequence-property relations, and functions (Huaiying Zhang, James Schneider, Jose Lugo-Martinez)
- Condensates for separation/purification/high component enrichment (Rebecca Taylor)
Novel Tool Development
- AI and automated science for large-scale, high-throughput condensate biology (Huaiying Zhang, Jose Lugo-Martinez)
- Chemical tools including synthetic nucleic acids that modulate DNA/RNA condensates, fluorescent probes for labeling condensate components, chemical property sensors, and chem-optogenetic control of condensates (Bruce Armitage, Seth Childers, Huaiying Zhang, Bokai Zhu, Jonathan Henninger)
- Animal models to study condensate behavior in vivo and to apply therapeutic strategies to target condensate-associated diseases (Bokai Zhu, Arohan Subramanya, Jeffrey Brodsky)
- Microfluidics to study non-equilibrium reactions in condensates in cell-free systems and to transfect nanoparticles, probes, and proteins into cells in vitro (Derin Sevenler)
- Condensate property measurements with ultrasmall gold nanoparticles, AFM, FCS, optical trap (Huaiying Zhang, James Schneider, Seth Childers/Millstone)
- Electrochemical and fluorescence imaging of nuclear pore complexes (Shigeru Amemiya)