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The extent to which lipids in biological membranes self-organise into nanodomains is a subject of debate. Honigmann et al.combine scanning FCS and STED microscopies to monitor lipid diffusion over wide areas, and find that local trapping of sphingolipids may not depend on phase separation.

Experimental and theoretical results demonstrate that tight-junction formation depends on the growth of a condensed layer of ZO-1 proteins at the interface of the apical and lateral membrane, providing insight into self-assembly of complex mesoscale structures in cells.

Directional, non-vesicular lipid transport is responsible for fast, species-selective lipid sorting into organelle membranes.

Epithelial organoids share a common central lumen with various shapes and dynamics. Here, authors show that epithelial cysts formed from three different cell types obey the same physical laws and end up with a single lumen following conserved rules depending on their luminal pressure.

Clustering of proteins in the plasma membrane plays an important role in the regulation of both cellular signalling and membrane remodelling. Milovanovic et al.demonstrate that mismatch between transmembrane domain length and the lipid bilayer thickness is sufficient to drive clustering of SNARE proteins.

Interactions between synaptotagmin-1 and the SNARE syntaxin-1 are known to mediate synaptic-vesicle exocytosis. Fusion experiments with artificial lipid membranes combined with the crystal structure of synaptotagmin's C2B domain bound to phosphoserine indicate that PIP2 clusters, organized by syntaxin, act as molecular beacons for vesicle docking and direct Ca²⁺-dependent membrane fusion.

Cells can form a rotating doublet. This rotation is driven by the symmetry breaking of myosin polarization in the cortices of the two cells.

Cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease is associated with Tau at the postsynapse. We show that multivalent Tau interactions arrest in vitro condensates and clusters mimicking the postsynaptic density that may result in synaptic dysfunction.

DNA nanotechnology is used to develop fully synthetic, programmable and printable 3D cell-culture matrices with stress-relaxation crosslinkers that encode (nano)mechanical stability. The hydrogel performs on par with solubilized animal-basement-membrane-derived cell-culture matrices.

How euchromatin organisation and transcription are related is unclear. Here, the authors observe the dynamics of euchromatin organization showing that accumulating RNA recruits RNA-binding proteins that together with transcribed euchromatin separate from non-transcribed euchromatin, forming microphases.

Primary cilia are isolated from monolayers of mammalian cells in culture for cryo-ET analyses, revealing new features as well as how they differ from motile cilia.

The existence of membrane rafts of higher lipid order in living cells is subject to ongoing debate. Here, Sevcsik et al. use a micropatterning approach to show that glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored proteins, typical raft constituents, do not influence their membrane nanoenvironment to promote raft phase formation.

Although many proteins adopt uneven distributions in the plasma membrane, it is not clear how these nanoscale heterogeneities relate to the general protein patterning of the membrane. Saka et al. use click chemistry to reveal the mesoscale organization of membrane proteins into multi-protein assemblies.

Fluorescent probes for bioimaging need to exhibit bright fluorescence, be biocompatible and offer several alternatives for attachment to biomolecules of interest. Here, a near-infrared silicon–rhodamine fluorophore is introduced that can be coupled to intracellular proteins in live cells and tissues and can be exploited for super-resolution microscopy.

Collective migration of epithelial sheets is strongly modulated by physical confinement. This study shows that adhesive micropillars impose a critical length scale below which coordinated motion is lost, giving rise to slower, more diffusive, and spatially uncorrelated migration.

The realization that the cell is abundantly compartmentalized into biomolecular condensates has opened new opportunities for understanding the physics and chemistry underlying many cellular processes¹, fundamentally changing the study of biology². The term biomolecular condensate refers to non-stoichiometric assemblies that are composed of multiple types of macromolecules in cells, occur through phase transitions, and can be investigated by using concepts from soft matter physics³. As such, they are intimately related to aqueous two-phase systems⁴ and water-in-water emulsions⁵. Condensates possess tunable emergent properties such as interfaces, interfacial tension, viscoelasticity, network structure, dielectric permittivity, and sometimes interphase pH gradients and electric potentials^6–14. They can form spontaneously in response to specific cellular conditions or to active processes, and cells appear to have mechanisms to control their size and location^15–17. Importantly, in contrast to membrane-enclosed organelles such as mitochondria or peroxisomes, condensates do not require the presence of a surrounding membrane.