Franco Lab
Principal Investigator: Elisa Franco
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: ✅ Accepting PhD Students
Research Focus
Project summary Our understanding of biology is being transformed by the discovery and characterization of organelles arising from the spontaneous phase separation of proteins and RNA, in the absence of a lipid membrane. These membraneless organelles, also called condensates, occur at different cellular locations and can appear as solids, gels, or liquids. Dozens of distinct biomolecular condensates are associated with pathways that regulate genes, stress response, and, and their function depends on the types of molecules they recruit from the cellular environment. This has spurred the interest toward developing means to harness condensation by building artificial condensates, that could be used for separating molecules in vitro and as organelles inside living cells. Most efforts in this direction rely on engineered proteins that include disordered domains: this approach however is hampered by difficulties in building proteins presenting well-defined interactions, minimal promiscuity, and limited side effects. These challenges can be addressed by adopting engineered RNA, rather than proteins, as a building block for artificial condensates, because specific RNA-RNA interactions are…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM155833-03: Developing synthetic RNA organelles for spatiotemporal separation, control, and monitoring in living cells (2026)
- 5R35GM155833-02: Developing synthetic RNA organelles for spatiotemporal separation, control, and monitoring in living cells (2025)
- 1R35GM155833-01: Developing synthetic RNA organelles for spatiotemporal separation, control, and monitoring in living cells (2024)
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