From Pan-Life Phase Insights to PhaseHub: Analyzing Condensate Complexity

Macromolecular condensation is crucial in biological signaling pathways that regulate development and adaptation processes. However, lacking conserved residues in disordered region of condensate proteins hampers alignment-based analyses of their evolutionary trajectory. To gain a comprehensive overview of phase-separating protein evolution across the Tree of Life, we analyzed phase-separating proteins of proteomes from 1,106 species. Eukaryotes and prokaryotes showed high contrast in need for phase-separating proteins and with a clear genome size-dependent correlation. Evolutionary success appears to hinge on the balance between functional condensation and avoiding harmful aggregation-prone biophysical signatures, such as certain amino acid homorepeats embedded in molecular grammar. We also identified potential phase separation-regulated signaling hubs across kingdoms by integrating phase-separation-positive proteins with protein abundance and interactome data across four model eukaryotic species. Consequently, we created PhaseHub ( https://phasehub.sbs.ntu.edu.sg/ ), a user-friendly interface that explores key scaffold proteins and binders to pinpoint associated partners and potential multicomponent phase separation hubs.