By engineering and deploying genetically-encoded, phase-separation sensors in mouse and human skin, we report in Science that liquid-liquid phase separation drives the process of skin barrier formation. Besides providing new insights into the poorly understood process of skin barrier formation, these findings have broad implications to the emerging field of cellular mechanisms driven by phase behavior, and beg the exploration of the underlying strategies for the engineering of novel self-assembling and stimuli-responsive materials.
For a broad overview about these newly-discovered liquid droplets in skin, see also the perspective article by Rai and Pelkmans.