Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Briefing
  • Published:

Identifying phase-separating biomolecular condensates in cells

We developed a high-throughput, unbiased strategy for the identification of endogenous biomolecular condensates by merging cell volume compression, sucrose density gradient centrifugation and quantitative mass spectrometry. We demonstrated the performance of this strategy by identifying both global condensate proteins and those responding to specific biological processes on a proteome-wide scale.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: High-throughput identification of biomolecular condensates.

References

  1. Alberti, S. & Hyman, A. A. Biomolecular condensates at the nexus of cellular stress, protein aggregation disease and ageing. Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Bio. 22, 196–213 (2021). A review article that presents the role of condensates in age-related human disease.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. You, K. et al. PhaSepDB: a database of liquid–liquid phase separation related proteins. Nucleic Acids Res. 48, D354–D359 (2020). This paper reports a database of liquid–liquid phase separation-related proteins.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Alberti, S., Gladfelter, A. & Mittag, T. Considerations and challenges in studying liquid-liquid phase separation and biomolecular condensates. Cell 176, 419–434 (2019). A review article that presents guidelines for the study of biomolecular condensates.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  4. Riback, J. A. et al. Composition-dependent thermodynamics of intracellular phase separation. Nature 581, 209–214 (2020). This paper reports the composition of condensates is tuned by thermodynamics.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  5. Li, Y., Tang, W. & Guo, M. The cell as matter: Connecting molecular biology to cellular functions. Matter 4, 1863–1891 (2021). A review article that presents the relationship between intracellular biomolecular processes and Multicellular tissue behaviour.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Li, Y. et al. Volumetric compression induces intracellular crowding to control intestinal organoid growth via Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Cell Stem Cell 28, 63–78 (2021). This paper reports that cell volume compression results in rapid and reversible membraneless organelles.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This is a summary of: Li, P. et al. High-throughput and proteome-wide discovery of endogenous biomolecular condensates. Nat. Chem. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-024-01485-1 (2024).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Identifying phase-separating biomolecular condensates in cells. Nat. Chem. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-024-01503-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-024-01503-2

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing