Pappu installed as Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Rohit V. Pappu, PhD, an internationally renowned researcher in biomolecular condensates and intrinsically disordered proteins, was installed Oct. 9 as the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Pappu is a professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Center for Biomolecular Condensates at the McKelvey School of […]

Pappu to explore ways in which charge contributes to diverse states of proteins

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are defined by structural diversity, and the determinants of this diversity are an important area of biophysical investigation. IDPs are involved in a range of important biological processes, including cell signaling and regulation, that allow healthy cells to respond to environmental factors appropriately, but they are also associated with human diseases […]

How do cells take out the trash?

Research uncovers how unfolded proteins are discarded, and how a perfectly good protein can wind up in the trash

New structure found in cells

Every cell contains millions of protein molecules. Some of them have the ability to phase-separate to form non-membrane-bound compartments, called biomolecular condensates, inside a cell. It has long been assumed that there was no further structure underlying these condensates, only solution-soluble proteins. A research group led by Rohit Pappu, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor […]

Pappu lab untangles more IDR secrets

Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) of proteins, when tethered to folded domains, function either as flexible tails or as linkers between domains. Most IDRs are composed of a mixture of oppositely charged residues. Recent measurements of tethered polyampholytes have shown that arginine- and lysine-rich sequences tend to behave very differently from one another. In a paper […]