UROP Research Mentor Project Submission Portal: Submission #1140

Overall Research Project Description After spontaneous protein phase separation (PS) in a living cell was observed for the first time, subsequent studies have revealed that the occurrence of biomolecular PS is ubiquitous in a living system. The immediate consequence of PS is the formation of membraneless organelles (MLOs), where select biomolecules such as proteins and mRNAs are enriched. Due to such enrichment of selective biomolecules, MLOs are suggested to play important regulatory roles in cellular processes. Past studies focused on biophysical mechanisms behind the biomolecular PS, which significantly enhances our understanding of the PS processes. Despite such progress in the past decade, we lack a predictive model that accurately predicts the dynamics of MLO formation in living cells. Motivated by the above considerations, this project aims to 1) construct a mechanistic model that describes the dynamics of MLO formation in bacteria 2) perform estimation of parameters in the proposed model to maximize the predictive capability of the proposed model based on the real microscopic images of MLOs in bacteria 3) Validate the prediction accuracy by performing new experiments (in bacteria).