BIAPSS - comprehensive bioinformatic analysis of liquid-liquid phase separating sequences

Liquid-liquid phase separation of many proteins is critical in the biological function of membrane-less organelles. Reversible nature of biomolecular PS in cells suggests that phases of proteins and nucleic acids are like to be tightly regulated. Post-translational modifications and single-residue mutations have been shown to lead to the dissolution of biomolecular droplets or phase transition into aggregated forms. Based on the wealth of experimental data, it reasonable to expect that the PS of proteins is highly sequence-specific.
To reveal common motifs of protein sequences that promote PS, we have carried out large-scale statistical analysis of phase separating protein deposited in the LLPS databases. For each motif, the most significant interactions have been identified (e.g. charge, hydropathy, polarity, pi-stacking). The bioinformatic analysis provides us with the knowledge about sequence conservation, secondary structure preferences, solvent accessibility, contacts, charge decoration, AA composition, and short linear motifs detection.
The recently developed by us BIAPSS tool is a publically accessible repository that may be used by both experimentalists for designing controlled mutations and for computationally-oriented scientists for developing new modeling tools.