A tremendous honor! Thrilled & humbled to receive 2025 Keio Medical Science Prize for launching LLPS #phaseseparation field (= #softmatter + #cellbio) w collaborators esp @HymanLab. & Congrats to Akiko Iwasaki @virusesimmunity.bsky.social. www.princeton.edu/news/2025/09... #KeioMedicalSciencePrize
🎉 Congratulations to HHMI Investigators Clifford Brangwynne and Akiko Iwasaki, the two winners of the 30th annual Keio Medical Science Prize. This international prize, awarded by Keio University in Tokyo, honors scientists who have made major contributions to the fields of medical or life sciences.
Cells organize key processes in biomolecular condensates, such as the multiphase nucleolus where ribosomes are made 🏭. Due to its dynamic and compartmentalized nature, small molecule perturbations of this process💊 lead to fast and distinct morphology rearrangements🌀. (2/10)
Combining sequencing and imaging, @brangwynnelab.bsky.social maps the spatiotemporal dynamics of rRNA processing, demonstrating how rRNA serves as both a scaffold and a substrate for the nucleolus—a multiphase, liquid-like structure. 🧪 🧬
Congrats to Jing @jesszhiyuezhao.bsky.social & @dnamystrom.bsky.social on cool manuscript!!! Reveals how cell nucleus is a heterogeneous material, w chromatin organization controlling formation & phase behavior of nuclear condensates. #CellBiology#Chromatin#PhaseSeparationrdcu.be/evWxR
Awesome paper alert! Learn about spectrum of chromatin condensate morphologies due to elastocapillary effects (no, liquids do not need to be spherical!), from amazing duo @dnamystrom.bsky.social & Hongbo Zhao, w/ important contributions from co-authors Jorine Eeftens, Mikko Haataja, Andrej Kosmrlj.
If heterochromatin is really a liquid-like condensate, why is it not spherical? We investigated whether mechanical interactions between a condensate and a fiber network can explain the variety of morphologies seen in phase-separated nuclear compartments www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Princeton's new Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute is hiring! New building opening this Fall, & Princeton is an awesome place to live & do amazing research at intersection of engineering & life sciences. **Please spread the word*** bioengineering.princeton.edu/join/open.
Such a wonderful symposium at UMichigan! And a fantastic opportunity to connect with our beloved benefactors (and Michiganders) Gil Omenn and Martha Darling, together with my Princeton/Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute colleague (& Deputy Director) @toettch.bsky.social
Congrats to this year's Brangwynne lab new PhD Kevin Xu (co-advised with Avalos) and graduating undergrads Aya Abu-Alfa and Emmett Grover. Kevin is now CEO of a startup, Aya is off to MD/PhD program, and Emmett to medical school. Congratulations - we are so proud of you!!!!
Nucleoli as biomolecular bubble tea! Congrats to former Princeton ugrad Holly Cheng (now GS @MIT) ->Holly's senior thesis work, a close collab w Roggeveen Wang & @zs-biophys.bsky.social &Stone. Come for the cool movies & stay for the viscoelasticity! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407423122
So grateful for our amazing inaugural advisory council for the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, who came to Princeton last week to learn about and help guide all that is happening in ODBI, the future of Bioengineering at Princeton. Thank you all!!! bioengineering.princeton.edu
