A bending rigidity parameter for stress granule condensates
J. O. Law, C. M. Jones, T. Stevenson, T. A. Williamson, M. Turner, H. Kusumaatmaja, S. N. Grellscheid
Image Credit: Thomas Stevenson
Research
I am a member of Halim Kusumaatmaja's group at the Univeristy of Edinburgh and am interested in soft-matter and biophysics, in particular biomolecular condensates.
Biomolecular condensates are liquid-like droplets which form in cells through liquid-liquid phase separation and are thought to act as sites for chemical sequastration and as reaction vessels.
My work is on a flicker spectrocopy techinque which we have developed to measure the mechanical properties of condensates (like their surface tension and bending rigidity) by observing their thermal fluctuations in microscope images.
Since the composition of a condensate affects its properties, we can use this information to understand the structure of conensates as well as how they form and how they age.
Publications
Non-invasive measurement of biomolecular condensate interfacial tension and bending rigidity
T. A. Williamson, J. O. Law, T. Stevenson, C. M. Jones, F. Wolf, E. S. Tønnessen, H. Kusumaatmaja, S. N. Grellscheid
Image Credit: Thomas Stevenson
Software
Talks
- UK Condensates Meeting, University of Shefiled, December 2025 (Prize for best presentation)
- Bioinspired Soft Matter Meeting, University of Edinburgh, June 2025
- St. Andrews Undergraduate Science Conference, University of St. Andrews, January 2023 (Invited Speaker)
Other Work
During my undergraduate degree, I undertook a Laidlaw Scholarship which, amongst other things, allowed me to conduct work as a summer student in 2022 on the same project I now work on as a PhD student and work as an Assistant Instructor on a STEM outreach programme in Boston, USA.
I was also featured in the Laidlaw Scholars' Organisation's Scholar Spotlight.
You can read my reports from both of these summer projects by clicking the button below.