Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) research groups µFlow Cell (Prof. Wim De Malsche – Coordinator), Bio2Byte (Prof. Wim Vranken) and B-PHOT (Prof. Heidi Ottevaere) received EU-funding for an MSCA Doctoral Network on ‘Protein-RNA phase-separated condensates and their capacity for catalysis (PhaseCat)’.
The debate of how life has evolved and which biomolecules (DNA, RNA and/or proteins) came first is still ongoing. Given their evolutionary co-occurrence, it is likely that proteins and RNA, and their catalytic capabilities, originally co-evolved. Importantly, proteins and RNA spontaneously form phase-separated condensates (PSCs), which raises the possibility that they were functional in the primordial soup as well. This idea is extremely compelling because PSCs can, at increased molecular concentrations, enhance catalytic capacity. In PhaseCat, the VUB research groups (BE) are forming together with the Bioinspired Peptides Laboratory of NOVA University of Lisbon (Prof. Ana Pina, PT), the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of the University of Vienna (Prof. Bojan Zagrovic, AT), and companies Microfluidics Innovation Center (FR) and Solfarcos (PT) an MSCA Doctoral Network to train 9 doctoral students. They will study how such protein-RNA catalytic reactions may have evolved in PSCs, especially in the context of primordial translation, and how they could be exploited for industrially relevant reactions. In PhaseCat, high-throughput screening of PSCs through microfluidics is combined with Raman spectroscopy, analysis of protein/RNA-mediated biological catalysis and its application in green chemistry, and computational methods to tie together all components, predict properties, and inform experiments.