Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Mar 15:156:160-166.
doi: 10.1016/j.semcdb.2022.09.013. Epub 2022 Oct 4.

An emerging role for the endoplasmic reticulum in stress granule biogenesis

Christopher V Nicchitta  1
Affiliations
Review

An emerging role for the endoplasmic reticulum in stress granule biogenesis

Christopher V Nicchitta. Semin Cell Dev Biol. .

Abstract

Stress granules (SGs), structurally dynamic, optically resolvable, macromolecular assemblies of mRNAs, RNA binding proteins (RBPs), translation factors, ribosomal subunits, as well as other interacting proteins, assemble in response to cell stress conditions that elicit phosphorylation of eukaryotic initiation factor 2α (eIF2α) and consequently, the inactivation of translation initiation. SG biology is conserved throughout eukaryotes and has recently been linked to the pathological sequelae of neurodegenerative disorders, cancer biology, and viral infection. Substantial insights into mechanisms of SG biogenesis, and more broadly the phenomenon of biological liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), have been aided by detailed proteomic and transcriptomic studies as well as in vitro reconstitution approaches. A particularly interesting and largely unexplored element of SG biology is the cell biological context of SG biogenesis, including its subcellular organization and more recently, evidence that the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane may serve important functions in RNA granule biology generally and SG biogenesis specifically. A central role for the ER in SG biogenesis is discussed and a hypothesis linking SG formation on the ER to the trafficking, localization and de novo translation of newly exported mRNAs is presented.

Keywords: Endoplasmic reticulum; Integrated stress response; MRNA; Processing body; Stress granule; Translation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The author has no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Boija A, et al., Transcription Factors Activate Genes through the Phase-Separation Capacity of Their Activation Domains. Cell, 2018. 175(7): p. 1842–1855 e16. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hofmann S, et al., Molecular mechanisms of stress granule assembly and disassembly. Biochim Biophys Acta Mol Cell Res, 2021. 1868(1): p. 118876. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ilik IA and Aktas T, Nuclear speckles: dynamic hubs of gene expression regulation. FEBS J, 2021. - PubMed
    1. Ivanov P, Kedersha N, and Anderson P, Stress Granules and Processing Bodies in Translational Control. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol, 2019. 11(5). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Strom AR and Brangwynne CP, The liquid nucleome - phase transitions in the nucleus at a glance. J Cell Sci, 2019. 132(22). - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources