Crowded rooms make enzymes work harder — until the crowd itself starts to flow

The inside of a cell is not a quiet laboratory bench; it is a crush of proteins. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, with partners at the Max Planck Institute and RIKEN, watched what that crowding does to enzymes — the proteins that run life's chemistry — inside model droplets. Crowding nudged a test enzyme into the shape it needs to work, raising its activity; the activity, in turn, stirred tiny flows that made the whole droplet move more freely. Published in Nature Communications, the work explains a feedback loop at the heart of how cells organise themselves — and where it breaks when droplets grow too dense.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation