Wilken Lab at JGU-Mainz

The Wilken Lab uses programmable, multi-component model systems of biomolecular phase separation to investigate the physical mechanisms of self-organization and transport in soft, disordered materials, inspired by the active, biochemically and mechanically complex environment of the cellular interior.

Biological systems achieve a richness of structure and function that synthetic materials have yet to reproduce: from the precise packing of photoreceptors in the avian retina to the self-organizing droplets that compartmentalize the living cell. We are an interdisciplinary soft matter group combining precision microscopy, large-scale simulation, and nanoscale biomolecular design—including programmable DNA nanotechnology and engineered phase-separating condensates—to uncover the far-from-equilibrium principles behind these behaviors and to build synthetic materials that transport light, stress, and biochemical signals in new ways.

We are based in the Department of Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, as a Junior Research Group in the Carl-Zeiss-Foundation Center for Synthetic Genomics. Learn more about our current research and the people behind it.

Sam Wilken, Junior Research Group Leader