Jorge R Espinosa

Research

My research focuses on understanding the role of Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in genome organization from a mechanistic, thermodynamic and molecular point of view. For that purpose, in our group we carry out molecular simulations at very different scales. On the one hand, we use low resolution coarse-grained models to investigate the physical determinants driving thousands of proteins and polymers to form membrane-less organelles in our cells. On the other, by means of sequence dependent high-resolution models, we study what specific residues and sequences lead our proteins and DNA to fold and organize our genome.

Background

One of my other research interests relies on the study of liquid-to-solid transitions in soft matter. Nucleation, and more in concrete ice nucleation, has been one of the topics in which I have also been working with the aim of developing new techniques to characterise it from a molecular perspective.