Henry Kilgore PhD
Assistant Professor
Currently recruiting graduate students, post doctorates and a research technician. To learn more about the labs research, check out kilgorelab.com.
Cells coordinate their biochemical reactions by organizing proteins into both membrane-bound organelles and dynamic, membrane-less condensates. These compartments create distinct chemical microenvironments that enable their specialized biochemical functions. My work has shown that proteins encode in their linear amino acid sequences not only the information required for folding but also instructions that determine their selective partitioning into condensate compartments. Artificial intelligence models can be trained to decipher and generate these “distribution codes,” allowing the design of new proteins with programmed localization properties and interpretative power for addressing disease mechanisms. Ongoing work in the Kilgore Lab focuses on uncovering and characterizing these molecular codes through AI/ML approaches, then leveraging these findings to improve our understanding of biology in normal and disease models using approaches from molecular, cell and chemical biology.
Recent Studies
1. Henry R. Kilgore, Itamar Chinn, Peter Mikhael, Ilan Mitnikov, et al., Protein codes promote selective subcellular compartmentalization. Science. 387, 1095–1011 (2025).
2. Henry R. Kilgore, Kalon Overholt, and Peter Mikhael, et al. Distinct chemical environments in biomolecular condensates. Nature Chemical Biology 20, 291–301 (2024).
3. Henry R. Kilgore and Richard A. Young. Learning the chemical grammar of biomolecular condensates. Nature Chemical biology 18, 1298–1306 (2022).
Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellow 2020–2025
Spotlight: Songtao Ye, Choon Leng So and Danfeng Cai. Cracking the protein compartmentalization code with ProtGPS. Trends in Biochem. Sci. 2025.
Research Highlight: Jonathon A. Ditlev. and Julie Foreman-Kay. Beyond peptide targeting sequences: machine learning of cellular condensate localization. Cell Research. 2025.
Elie Dolgin AI Reveals Hidden Interior Design Rules of the Cell, IEEE Spectrum.
Elie Dolgin, How phase separation is revolutionizing biology, Nature, 2024.
BioByte 074, Decoding Biology
Bakhtyar Sepheri, Kevin Drew and José A. Villegas. Come for the atmosphere, stay for the interactions: Deciphering small molecule partitioning into biomolecular condensates. Cell Chemical Biology, Nov. 2023.
