Liquid-liquid phase separation in biology

One of the central questions in all of biology is understanding how the cell is organized in terms of space and time. Recently, it has become clear that many key cellular compartments, assemble spontaneously when proteins, nucleic acids and other biomolecules condense together into phase- separated, liquid droplets. The biomolecular condensates formed in this way regulate many important biological processes such as transcription or ribosome biogenesis and have also been associated with different pathologies including neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Coordinated by Prof. Dr. Bojan Zagrovic (https://www.maxperutzlabs.ac.at/research/research-groups/zagrovic) and involving 8 faculty from the University of Vienna, Medical University of Vienna, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), the ELLIPSE doctoral program will educate the next generation of multidisciplinary scientists who will be will be versed both in the practice of structural and cell biology and quantitative details of soft-matter theory and simulations, a union simply demanded by the highly complex phenomenon of biomolecular liquid-liquid phase separation. The ELLIPSE doctoral students will be embedded in the Vienna Biocenter PhD Program (https:/raining.vbc.ac.at/phd-program), one of Europes oldest and largest molecular biology PhD programs and, together with the involved faculty, will create a powerful hub for biological phase- separation research. Importantly, the four host institutions will support the ELLIPSE program through financial and in-kind contributions, including access to world-class infrastructure, almost doubling the value of the project. The phenomenon of liquid-liquid phase separation has taken the world of biology by storm, creating a need for crosstalk between biology and physics. The added value of ELLIPSE arises precisely from creating an educational and research framework that will make this crosstalk possible and enable a deep, rigorous understanding of a key biological phenomenon.