Vidhyadhar Nandana awarded WSU postdoctoral research award

Dr. Vidhyadhar Nandana, a post-doctoral scholar in the Schrader lab, has been awarded the 2023 postdoctoral research award from the Wayne State Graduate School in recognition of his contribution to the cellular organization by phase separation in bacteria.

Nandana is a co-first author of a new study that has identified the first protein inventory of Bacterial Ribonucleoprotein bodies (BR-bodies). BR-bodies are important membrane-less organelles that organize mRNA decay in bacteria and promote cellular stress tolerance. Dr. Nandana and the team of collaborators from the Wayne State Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame found that approximately 100 proteins with various cellular functions accumulate in BR-bodies.

While many of these proteins can directly accumulate inside BR-bodies, the team also identified a set of proteins that can cause the BR-bodies to disassemble, likely acting to regulate BR-body function. They also found that BR-bodies interface with a set of newly identified membraneless-organelles in a complex network of protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions, suggesting that bacteria likely contain numerous types of membraneless-organelles.

A preprint of the study can be found at The BR-body proteome contains a complex network of protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions.