Enclosed by two membranes, the nucleus itself is comprised of various membraneless compartments, including nuclear bodies and chromatin domains. These compartments play an important though still poorly understood role in gene regulation. Significant progress has been made in characterizing the dynamic behavior of nuclear compartments and liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) has emerged as a prominent mechanism governing their assembly. However, recent work reveals that certain nuclear structures violate key predictions of LLPS, suggesting that alternative mechanisms likely contribute to nuclear organization. Here, we review the evidence for and against LLPS for several nuclear compartments and discuss experimental strategies to identify the mechanism(s) underlying their assembly. We propose that LLPS, together with multiple modes of protein-nucleic acid binding, drive spatiotemporal organization of the nucleus and facilitate functional diversity among nuclear compartments.
Keywords: heterochromatin; liquid-liquid phase separation; nuclear bodies; nucleolus; paraspeckles; replication compartments; transcriptional condensates.