Salman F. Banani

TL;DR: This work has shown that liquid–liquid phase separation driven by multivalent macromolecular interactions is an important organizing principle for biomolecular condensates and has proposed a physical framework for this organizing principle.

TL;DR: Interactions between diverse synthetic, multivalent macromolecules (including multi-domain proteins and RNA) produce sharp liquid–liquid-demixing phase separations, generating micrometre-sized liquid droplets in aqueous solution.

TL;DR: The data suggest a conceptual framework for considering the composition and control of cellular bodies assembled through heterotypic multivalent interactions, suggesting how their compositions could be controlled by levels of PML SUMOylation or cellular mRNA concentration, respectively.

TL;DR: The authors comprehensively map pathogenic mutations to condensate-promoting protein features in putative condensor-forming proteins and find over 36,000 mutations that plausibly contribute to condensor dysregulation in over 1,200 Mendelian diseases and 550 cancers.

TL;DR: It is proposed that the ability to bind DNA, RNA and protein is a general property of many TFs and is fundamental to their gene regulatory function.