Mass Balance Imaging: A Phase Portrait Analysis for Characterizing Growth Kinetics of Biomolecular Condensates.

Biomolecular condensation has emerged as a key organizing principle governing the formation of membraneless cellular assemblies. Revealing the mechanism of formation of biomolecular condensates requires the quantitative examination of their growth kinetics. Here, we introduce mass balance imaging (MBI) as a general method to study compositional growth dynamics based on fluorescent images of multicomponent clusters.

A condensate dynamic instability orchestrates actomyosin cortex activation.

A key event at the onset of development is the activation of a contractile actomyosin cortex during the oocyte-to-embryo transition. Here we report on the discovery that, in Caenorhabditis elegans oocytes, actomyosin cortex activation is supported by the emergence of thousands of short-lived protein condensates rich in F-actin, N-WASP and the ARP2/3 complex that form an active micro-emulsion. A phase portrait analysis of the dynamics of individual cortical condensates reveals that condensates initially grow and then transition to disassembly before dissolving completely.