Welcome to the Laboratory of Samrat Mukhopadhyay

The overarching goal of our lab is to investigate a wide range of fascinating aspects of intrinsically disordered proteins/regions (IDPs/IDRs) that undergo macromolecular phase separation into biological condensates. IDPs challenge the tenets of the traditional structure-function paradigm and exist as a rapidly interconverting conformational ensemble rather than a single well-defined structure. The conformational plasticity allows them to adopt different structures depending on their binding partners. Therefore, a single polypeptide sequence is capable of accomplishing a range of functions. It proposed that retaining disorder is an evolutionary strategy that allows complex functions within a compact genome of higher organisms. Additionally, the dysfunction of many IDPs is associated with a range of deadly human diseases. In our lab, we utilize a diverse array of tools and concepts from chemical physics and physical chemistry to chemical biology to biophysics and molecular and cell biology to study the intriguing behavior of IDPs/IDRs that allow them to undergo phase transitions involved in a wide range of cellular functions and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and so forth. 

 For more details, see our Research page. 

News and Events

• Samrat will visit and speak at Stanford University, California (August 15, 2024), the ACS fall meeting in Denver, Colorado (August 21), and the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla,  California (August 26). If you want to meet him, email him or send him a DM on Twitter. 

• Ashish Joshi (14th PhD student) will join UT Southwestern for his postdoctoral studies. 

• Sandeep Rai (13th PhD student) has joined Harvard University for his postdoctoral work. All the best for his future endeavors.

• Samrat co-edited the "Biological Condensates" special issue for Biophysical Journal. Link

• Samrat took charge as the Biophysical Society (BPS) IDP subgroup chair at the 68th Biophysical Society Annual Meeting held in Philadelphia, for the 2025 Los Angeles BPS meeting.

• Samrat has been awarded the prestigious JC Bose Fellowship. 

• Our exciting paper on single-molecule FRET in biomolecular condensates is published in Nature Communications (this is our 3rd paper in Nature Communications).