It's Raining Liquids: RNA Tunes Viscoelasticity and Dynamics of Membraneless Organelles

Lin Guo; James Shorter

doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2015.10.006

It's Raining Liquids: RNA Tunes Viscoelasticity and Dynamics of Membraneless Organelles

Mol Cell. 2015 Oct 15;60(2):189-92. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2015.10.006.

Authors

Lin Guo¹, James Shorter²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
² Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Electronic address: jshorter@mail.med.upenn.edu.

Abstract

Paradigm-shifting advances have revealed that diverse membraneless organelles originate via liquid-liquid phase separation, but how their distinct structural and functional milieux are specified is not understood. Recent work elucidates that RNA governs the biophysical characteristics of liquid droplets formed by RNA-binding proteins with low-complexity domains and can decelerate pathogenic fibrillogenesis.

MeSH terms

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis / metabolism*
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis / pathology
Elasticity
Humans
Organelles / chemistry*
Organelles / metabolism
Protein Aggregation, Pathological / metabolism*
Protein Structure, Tertiary
RNA / chemistry*
RNA / metabolism
RNA-Binding Proteins / chemistry*
RNA-Binding Proteins / metabolism
Viscosity

Substances

RNA-Binding Proteins
RNA

Grants and funding

R01 GM099836/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States