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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Trends Biochem Sci. 2018 Apr 30;43(7):499–516. doi: 10.1016/j.tibs.2018.03.007

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Disparate phase diagrams of disordered and structured proteins. (a) LAF-1 consists of two terminal disordered regions and a structured domain. The N-terminal disordered region (RGG) can bind RNA. Reproduced from ref [13]. (b) Liquid-liquid coexistence curves of LAF-1 and its disordered RGG region, in the presence and absence of polyadenylate RNA (poly-rA) of 15, 30, and 3000 nucleotides. A leftward arrow labeled with “+RNA” indicates the shift of the droplet branch in the presence of RNA. Reproduced from ref [29]. (c) Structure of γII-crystallin, embedded in a sphere to emphasize the globular shape. (d) Phase diagrams of 4 types of γ-crystallins, which are members of a highly homologous family of proteins. Symbols and the associated upper curves represent the fluid branch of the fluid-solid phase diagram, and lower curves are fits to liquid-liquid coexistence data from ref [36]. The fact that the liquid-liquid coexistence curve lies entirely below the fluid branch indicates metastability of the liquid-liquid phase separation relative to the fluid-solid phase separation (cf Box 3 Figure I). Reproduced from ref [78].