Speaker: Dr. Stephanie Weber (McGill University)
Where: L-GE 110 | When: 1:15 pm “Phase Separation Drives Nucleolar Assembly and Size Control” Abstract: My lab uses quantitative live-cell imaging and physical modeling to investigate the mechanisms governing spatial organization in the cell. Recent work focuses on the nucleolus, a large membraneless organelle responsible for ribosome biogenesis. By genetically manipulating the size of C. elegans embryos, we identified a concentration threshold below which nucleolar components remain dissolved in the nucleoplasm and above which they condense to form the nucleolus. Moreover, the size of the nucleolus scales with the size of the cell. Finally, despite nonequilibrium activity in the cell, the kinetics of nucleolar assembly are consistent with thermodynamic models of first-order phase transitions. Our results indicate that the nucleolus assembles by liquid-liquid phase separation of the nucleoplasm. Given the ubiquity of membraneless organelles in both the nucleoplasm and cytoplasm, phase separation may provide a general mechanism for compartmentalization of the cell. Weber Lab @ McGill: https://weberlab.net/people/ Comments are closed.
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