Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in Disease.

By S. Alberti, D. Dormann. Annual Review of Genetics, 2019

742 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have made rapid progress in recent years in identifying the genetic causes of many human diseases. However, despite this recent progress, our mechanistic understanding of these diseases is often incomplete. This is a problem because it limits our ability to develop effective disease treatments. To overcome this limitation, we need new concepts to describe and comprehend the complex mechanisms underlying human diseases. Condensate formation by phase separation emerges as a new principle to explain the organization of living cells. In this review, we present emerging evidence that aberrant forms of condensates are associated with many human diseases, including cancer, neurodegeneration, and infectious diseases. We examine disease mechanisms driven by aberrant condensates, and we point out opportunities for therapeutic interventions. We conclude that phase separation provides a useful new framework to understand and fight some of the most severe human diseases. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Genetics, Volume 53 is November 23, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Subfields: Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fd9e162440b10efe4b04fdb39581b27de6be4e46

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In Molecular Biology

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Physics-driven coarse-grained model for biomolecular phase separation with near-quantitative accuracy (2021, background): “The ensuing condensates play important roles in cellular function as well as dysfunction 3 , so delineating the mechanisms of intracellular LLPS is now an active area of research.”