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The shape-shifting blobs that shook up cell biology

More than a decade ago, scientists started finding peculiar droplets inside cells. Now researchers are trying to work out how these ubiquitous beads form and what they do.
  1. Elie Dolgin

    1. Elie Dolgin is a science journalist in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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Nucleoli from oocytes of the frog Xenopus laevis.

Condensates (red, green, blue) containing proteins nest within one another in this fragment of a nucleus from a frog cell. Credit: Marina Feric and Cliff Brangwynne

For years, if you asked a scientist how they pictured the inner workings of a cell, they might have spoken of a highly organized factory, with different departments each performing specialized tasks in delineated assembly lines.

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Nature 611, 24-27 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03477-y

Updates & Corrections

  • Clarification 27 February 2023: This article has been modified to address ambiguities about scientists’ reactions to Andrea Musacchio’s critiques.

  • Update 10 March 2023: This article has been modified to cite a paper (ref. 11) published after this story was published and to address ambiguities about critiques of the role of phase separation.

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