Unconventional organelles – biological condensates and crystal biology

I study a simple question that turns out to be surprisingly nontrivial:

Why do cells build crystals?

For more than a century, since Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel, intracellular crystals were often regarded as passive waste products or cellular curiosities. My research has shown that these structures can serve as nutrient reservoirs, optical devices, regulators of metabolism, and potentially key players in global biogeochemical cycles.

By combining protistology, spectroscopy, microscopy, genetics, structural biology, photonics, and environmental biology, I investigate the formation, function, and evolution of biogenic crystals across microbial eukaryotes.

My long-term goal is to establish a unified framework connecting:

genes → molecular self-assembly → crystal formation → cell physiology → ecosystems → global biogeochemical cycles and Earth system processes

By understanding why cells build crystals, we may uncover previously hidden principles that shape life across scales, from molecule to structure to organelle to ecosystems