Ricerc@Sapienza

The interplay between phase separation and self-assembly is an instriguing topic that has important implications in different fields, ranging from statistical mechanics to materials science and biology. Recent advances in cell biology have shown that such an interplay underlies the formation, dissolution and function of a new class of organelles called "membraneless organelles". These are compartmentalized portions of the cell that act as chemical reactors and whose formation and function is dynamically regulated by the cellular environment and signalling machinery. In this project we take inspiration from recent advances in the cell biology to develop a model that can mimic, on a qualitative level, the thermodynamics and kinetics of formation of membraneless organelles. To this regard we will employ numerical simulations of coarse-grained models to address (i) the kinetics of formation and dissolution of membraneless organelles modelled as phase-separated condensates formed by protein-like particles and (ii) the static and dynamic properties of membraneless organelles in the presence of client (host) molecules of different type. Our results will be relevant not only for the biophysics of the cell, but they will also contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between phase separation and self-assembly.