ArticleeLife2021
Physical observables to determine the nature of membrane-less cellular sub-compartments.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Start early and pack light: Collaborative adventures in theory and experiment.Seminars in cell & developmental biology · 2025Review
- A large C-terminal Rad52 segment acts as a chaperone to Form and Stabilize Rad51 Filaments.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Distinct mobility patterns of BRCA2 molecules at DNA damage sites.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- Multi-Scale Imaging of the Dynamic Organization of Chromatin.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- HP1-driven phase separation recapitulates the thermodynamics and kinetics of heterochromatin condensate formation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- A sePARate phase? Poly(ADP-ribose) versus RNA in the organization of biomolecular condensates.Nucleic acids research · 2022Review
- Review
- Protein diffusion inScience advances · 2022Article
- Stochastic particle unbinding modulates growth dynamics and size of transcription factor condensates in living cells.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Multi-scale dynamics of heterochromatin repair.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2021Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The spatial organization of complex biochemical reactions is essential for the regulation of cellular processes. Membrane-less structures called foci containing high concentrations of specific proteins have been reported in a variety of contexts, but the mechanism of their formation is not fully understood. Several competing mechanisms exist that are difficult to distinguish empirically, including liquid-liquid phase separation, and the trapping of molecules by multiple binding sites. Here, we propose a theoretical framework and outline observables to differentiate between these scenarios from single molecule tracking experiments. In the binding site model, we derive relations between the distribution of proteins, their diffusion properties, and their radial displacement. We predict that protein search times can be reduced for targets inside a liquid droplet, but not in an aggregate of slowly moving binding sites. We use our results to reject the multiple binding site model for Rad52 foci, and find a picture consistent with a liquid-liquid phase separation. These results are applicable to future experiments and suggest different biological roles for liquid droplet and binding site foci.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.