Rohit Pappu is the Edwin H. Murty Professor of Engineering in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), USA. Pappu is also the Director of the Center for Science & Engineering of Living Systems (CSELS) at WashU. Pappu is a biophysicist who uses a blend of novel computations, polymer physics theories, and experiments to understand the workings of intrinsically disordered proteins and the physical principles that underlie spatial and temporal organization of cellular matter. Work in the Pappu lab has focused on systems that drive phase separation and percolation transitions, and one of the major goals is to design novel biomolecular condensates as a route to understanding how cellular decisions and phenotypes are controlled by condensates. 

Molecular grammar of protein and RNA molecules that governs the phase behavior of nuclear bodies

This talk will present an overview and some details of the physical principles that connect information written into protein and RNA sequences that govern the driving forces for phase separation that gives rise to nuclear bodies with distinct compositional biases and material properties.