Webinar: David de Sancho on “Driving forces in biomolecular condesates from atomistic simulations of model peptides”

In this BioExcel webinar, David de Sancho explores how simple peptide models can reveal the physical rules behind biomolecular phase separation. Building on the long-standing use of short peptides to study folding, internal friction, and force-field accuracy, the talk highlights recent atomistic molecular dynamics simulations of individual amino acids and amino-acid mixtures at saturated concentrations. These systems are used to test a central idea in condensate science: that phase separation may emerge from amino acid composition alone, even without long polypeptide chains, multivalency, or sequence patterning. In the context of the “sticker-spacer” paradigm, the results also clarify the relative importance of interactions between aromatic and positively charged residues, two key drivers in condensates, and show strong agreement with experimental trends and simulations of full-length intrinsically disordered proteins.

David de Sancho is a Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country and Donostia International Physics Center in San Sebastián, Spain.

Watch the webinar recording on the BioExcel website: https://bioexcel.eu/webinar-driving-forces-in-biomolecular-condensates-from-atomistic-simulations-of-model-peptides-2026-05-12/