Seminario dott. Lorenzo Rovigatti Titolo-Designer protein assemblies with tunable phase diagrams in living cells
https://meet.google.com/zbg-cdsq-kem
Ore 13.00- Lorenzo Rovigatti
Titolo-Designer protein assemblies with tunable phase diagrams in living cells
Abstract-Until a few years ago it was believed that the internal organisation of the cells was achieved thanks to organelles separated from the rest of the cytoplasm by membranes. Recently, however, it has been discovered that there exist a number of organelles, also called biomolecular condensates, which have no membrane and play an important role in the cellular homeostasis. Moreover, the mechanisms underlying the formation of these organelles, mainly composed of proteins and nucleic acids, seem to be also involved in the pathogenesis of diseases caused by abnormal aggregation of proteins such as Alzheimer's, ALS and frontotemporal dementia. Due to the high number of cytoplasm components, identifying the mechanisms that control the formation and dissolution of biomolecular condensates under physiological conditions is extremely difficult. To overcome this problem, we genetically engineer yeast cells to produce proteins capable of forming biomolecular condensates with controllable chemo-physical properties through self-assembly. We then use model systems to (i) draw numerical and theoretical phase diagrams of the experimental synthetic protein system and (ii) investigate the out-of-equilibrium effects as seen in growing cells. Notwithstanding the simplicity of the models we use, which neglect the presence of the solvent and of other macromolecules interacting non-specifically with the synthetic proteins, we are able to capture the essence of the physics of the experimental system, qualitatively reproducing all the trends observed in vivo
