A new experiment with fractional quantum Hall states provides further evidence that the states’ characteristic quasiparticles obey fractional statistics.
Published: January 21, 2021
Autophagy is a fundamental cellular process by which cells capture and degrade their own dysfunctional or superfluous components for degradation and recycling. Recent research has revealed that phase separated droplets have a range of important functions in cells. An international collaboration between German, Norwegian, and Japanese researchers has unravelled the mechanisms underpinning both how these droplets are captured through autophagy, as well as how droplets can serve as a platform from which structures facilitating cytosolic autophagy arise.
Autophagy eats portions of liquid droplets in cells
A liquid droplet made of phase-separated proteins (magenta) can associate with autophagy membranes (green). In this paper, it was shown that the droplet-membrane interaction depends on wetting and is defined by the surface tension of the droplet. As autophagy membranes expand on the droplet surface, droplets of sufficiently low surface tension are unable