From the ivory tower to the public square: Strategies to restore public trust in science

For centuries, the scientific community has played a major part in the progress of humanity. Scientific and technological innovations have boosted labour productivity, enabled important social progress, eradicated diseases, and generally improved the quality of life for most people. However, over the last decades, a worrisome trend of science-skepticism is on the rise. At the level of individuals, it renders citizens non-cooperating with scientifically informed policies, such as vaccination and social distancing policies. At the level of communities, which are often organized politically, skepticism may prevent translation of scientific consensus to political consensus and adoption of needed policies, such as reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Here, we consider the mechanisms that may underlie the diminishing trust in the scientific community, and suggest five strategies to regain this trust: (1) Incentivize direct public outreach. (2) Form a nationwide science communication network. (3) Adopt official, agnostic stands in non-scientific debates. (4) Continuously communicate with leaders of wary groups. (5) Strive for unbiased academic evaluation practices. Following these strategies will hopefully increase public trust by adapting science communication to the era of social media, diversifying the scientific community, and facilitating collaboration with wary communities.</p

From the ivory tower to the public square: Strategies to restore public trust in science

For centuries, the scientific community has played a major part in the progress of humanity. Scientific and technological innovations have boosted labour productivity, enabled important social progress, eradicated diseases, and generally improved the quality of life for most people. However, over the last decades, a worrisome trend of science-skepticism is on the rise. At the level of individuals, it renders citizens non-cooperating with scientifically informed policies, such as vaccination and social distancing policies. At the level of communities, which are often organized politically, skepticism may prevent translation of scientific consensus to political consensus and adoption of needed policies, such as reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Here, we consider the mechanisms that may underlie the diminishing trust in the scientific community, and suggest five strategies to regain this trust: (1) Incentivize direct public outreach. (2) Form a nationwide science communication network. (3) Adopt official, agnostic stands in non-scientific debates. (4) Continuously communicate with leaders of wary groups. (5) Strive for unbiased academic evaluation practices. Following these strategies will hopefully increase public trust by adapting science communication to the era of social media, diversifying the scientific community, and facilitating collaboration with wary communities

Physical theory of biological noise buffering by multicomponent phase separation

Significance The stochastic nature of transcription/translation implies that the concentrations of cellular proteins are “noisy” and not constant in time or across cell populations. Liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) can reduce or “buffer” this noise by maintaining well-defined concentrations, even in the presence of concentration distributions. However, this idea was recently challenged experimentally in multicomponent systems. Our physical theory of LLPS in ternary systems (solutes ϕ and ψ in a solvent) predicts their LLPS properties as a function of the ϕ – ϕ (homotypic) and ϕ – ψ (heterotypic) interaction strengths. We show how buffering can be effective if the noise distribution aligns with the tie-lines of the phase diagram and suggest that evolution may optimize concentration buffering by selecting appropriate mutations. </jats:p

Physical theory of biological noise buffering by multi-component phase separation

AbstractMaintaining homeostasis is a fundamental characteristic of living systems. In cells, this is contributed to by assembly of biochemically-distinct organelles, many of whom are not membrane-bound, but form by the physical process of liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). By analogy with LLPS in binary solutions, cellular LLPS was hypothesized to contribute to homeostasis by facilitating “concentration buffering”, which renders the local protein concentration within the organelle robust to global variations in the average, cellular concentration (e.g. due to expression noise). Interestingly, concentration buffering was experimentally measured in vivo, in a simple organelle with a single solute, while it was observed not to be obeyed in one with several solutes. Here, we formulate theoretically and solve analytically a physical model of LLPS in a ternary solution of two solutes (A and B) that interact both homotypically (A-A attractions) and heterotypically (A-B attractions). Our physical theory predicts how the equilibrium concentrations in LLPS are related to expression noise and thus generalizes the concept of concentration buffering to multi-component systems. This allows us to reconcile the seemingly contradictory experimental observations. Furthermore, we predict that incremental changes of the homotypic and heterotypic interactions among the molecules that undergo LLPS, such as those that are caused by mutations in the genes encoding the proteins, may increase the efficiency of concentration buffering of a given system. Thus, we hypothesize that evolution may optimize concentration buffering as an efficient mechanism to maintain LLPS homeostasis, and suggest experimental approaches to test this in different systems.SignificanceThe stochastic nature of transcription/translation implies that the concentrations of cellular proteins are “noisy” and not constant in time or across cell populations. Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), can reduce or “buffer” this noise by maintaining well-defined concentrations, even in the presence of concentration distributions. However, this idea was recently challenged experimentally in multicomponent systems. Our physical theory of LLPS in ternary systems (solutes A and B in a solvent), predicts their LLPS properties as a function of the A-A (homotypic) and A-B (heterotypic) interaction strengths. We show how buffering can be effective if the noise distribution aligns with the tie-lines of the phase diagram and suggest that evolution may optimize concentration buffering by selecting mutations that lead to this.</jats:sec

Balance of osmotic pressures determines the nuclear-to-cytoplasmic volume ratio of the cell

Significance For over a century, it has been known that the ratio of the nuclear and cytoplasm volumes (NC ratio), rather than the separate volumes, is constant among cells of many types of organisms. Changes of the NC ratio are associated with cancerous transformations, suggesting that the ratio has physiological importance. Notably, the dominant regulatory mechanism of the NC ratio has not been identified. Here, we use physical estimates of the forces implicated in nuclear volume determination and show that they are dominated by the osmotic pressure of actively transported proteins. Inspired by this, we formulate a minimal model for the cytoplasmic and nuclear volumes that predicts the NC ratio and the factors that modulate it, in agreement with published experiments.</jats:p

Equilibrium size distribution and phase separation of multivalent, molecular assemblies in dilute solution

Equilibrium self-assembly, gelation, and phase separation of multivalent molecules in dilute solutions analyzed using statistics of lattice animals depicted here.</p

Balance of osmotic pressures determines the volume of the cell nucleus

AbstractThe volume of the cell nucleus varies across cell-types and species, and is commonly thought to be determined by the size of the genome and degree of chromatin compaction. However, this notion has been challenged over the years by multiple experimental evidence. Here, we consider the physical condition of mechanical force balance as a determining condition of the nuclear volume and use quantitative, order-of-magnitude analysis to estimate the forces from different sources of nuclear and cellular pressure. Our estimates suggest that the dominant pressure within the nucleus and cytoplasm originates from the osmotic pressure of proteins and RNA molecules that are localized to the nucleus or cytoplasm by out-of-equilibrium, active nucleocytoplasmic transport rather than from chromatin or its associated ions. This motivates us to formulate a physical model for the ratio of the cell and nuclear volumes in which osmotic pressures of localized proteins determine the relative volumes. In accordance with unexplained observations that are century-old, our model predicts that the ratio of the cell and nuclear volumes is a constant, robust to a wide variety of biochemical and biophysical manipulations, and is changed only if gene expression or nucleocytoplasmic transport are modulated.</jats:p