Daniel S.W. Lee

TL;DR: CasDrop is used, a novel CRISPR-Cas9-based optogenetic technology, to show that various IDPs phase separate into liquid condensates that mechanically exclude chromatin as they grow and preferentially form in low-density, largely euchromatic regions.

TL;DR: Inspired by patchy colloid theory, this work proposes a general framework by which competing networks give rise to compositionally specific and tunable condensates, while relative linkage between nodes underlies multiphase organization.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that droplet growth dynamics are directly inhibited by the chromatin-dense environment, which gives rise to an anomalously slow coarsening exponent, β ≈ 0.5, which is consistent with Rouse-like dynamics arising from the entangled chromatin and suggest that condensate emulsions can be used to probe the viscoelastic mechanical environment within living cells.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that droplet growth dynamics are directly inhibited by the chromatin-dense environment, which gives rise to an anomalously slow coarsening exponent, β ≈ 0.5, which is consistent with Rouse-like dynamics arising from the entangled chromatin and suggest that condensate emulsions can be used to probe the viscoelastic mechanical environment within living cells.