Issue 6, 2007
From the journal:

Soft Matter

Dishevelled: a protein that functions in living cells by phase separating

Richard P. Seara  

a Department of Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom
E-mail: r.sear@surrey.ac.uk

Abstract

We review experimental work on a protein called Dishevelled. The unusual name derives from the fact that some mutations in Dishevelled cause fruit flies to develop with misaligned hairs on their bodies. Dishevelled apparently phase separates inside the cytosol of cells. As mutant variants of this protein that cannot phase separate also cannot perform their biological function, phase separation appears to be functional. The mechanism by which Dishevelled functions is poorly understood. We suggest that physical scientists may be able to contribute to the effort to understand how Dishevelled functions, by applying their knowledge of phase separation behaviour. We start to do this by comparing the predictions of a simple model of phase separation to the experimental data.

Graphical abstract: Dishevelled: a protein that functions in living cells by phase separating

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/B618126K
Article type
Emerging Area
Submitted
13 Dec 2006
Accepted
26 Feb 2007
First published
21 Mar 2007

Soft Matter, 2007,3, 680-684

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Dishevelled: a protein that functions in living cells by phase separating

R. P. Sear, Soft Matter, 2007, 3, 680 DOI: 10.1039/B618126K

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