Single-molecule biophysics to understand living systems

Single molecules inside biomolecular condensates

We are not fully satisfied with current views of how life works. We know a lot about what single molecules do in isolation. But in a cell, a myriad of them work together, and somehow it all stays coordinated. This is prodigious. We don’t really understand how.

We start from the bottom: single molecules, where individual events can be directly observed. Then we go up in scale, to see how these events become properties of a larger system, ideally up to the living state. We are also interested in identifying what goes wrong when these events stop adding up and disease appears.

Biomolecular condensates formed by phase separation of human proteins. These liquid-like “droplets” can contain millions of molecules and help organize many cellular functions (video from Galvanetto, Ivanovic et al., 2023).

What we like to do

We work in experimental biophysics, focusing on single-molecule fluorescence. We combine this with meso- and macro-scale experiments to link molecular processes to emergent behavior, and we integrate computation and theory to interpret and extend our observations.

Intrinsically disordered protein with two fluorescent labels for single-molecule FRET. These proteins lack a fixed 3D structure, fluctuate between many conformations, and are usually involved in phase separation (video from Nüesch et al., 2021).

The lab

This lab led by Nicola Galvanetto opened in 2026 at the Institute of Structural Biology (IBS) in Grenoble. I'm currently setting up the lab and recruiting postdocs, PhD students, and Master's students. If you're excited by single-molecule experiments and quantitative biophysics, email me.