“Models for Liquid-liquid Phase Separation of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins”

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), lack of a well-defined folded structure, have been recently shown to be critical to forming membrane-less organelles via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). Due to the flexible conformations of IDPs, it could be challenging to investigate IDPs with solely experimental techniques. Computational models can therefore provide complementary views at several aspects, including the fundamental physics underlying LLPS and the sequence determinants contributing to LLPS. In this presentation, I will start with our coarse-grained computational framework that can help generate sequence dependent phase diagrams. The coarse-grained model further led to the development of a polymer model with empirical parameters to quickly predict LLPS of IDPs. At last, I will show our preliminary efforts on addressing molecular interactions within LLPS of IDPs using all-atom explicit-solvent simulations.