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Biomolecules, Volume 9, Issue 2

2019 February - 44 articles

Cover Story: In eukaryotic cells, liquid–liquid phase separation of ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) drives regulated segregation of its macromolecules in space and time. The physiochemical microenvironment of the phase separated RNP condensates, sensitively depend on protein–protein interactions, which can be tuned by the linear sequence of the RNP chain. Here, we show that sequence-independent entropic forces that emerge within the crowded cellular space, facilitate RNP condensation. With increasing crowding, the RNP–RNP homotypic attraction is enhanced. This drives maturation of RNP condensates from a viscous fluid to a viscoelastic gel-like state. Our findings shed light on a key role of molecular crowding in tuning the phase behavior and mesoscale dynamics of membrane-less organelles. View this paper.
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Articles (44)

  • Article
  • Open Access
23 Citations
6,761 Views
14 Pages

Saturated Fatty Acid Activates T Cell Inflammation Through a Nicotinamide Nucleotide Transhydrogenase (NNT)-Dependent Mechanism

  • Grace McCambridge,
  • Madhur Agrawal,
  • Alanna Keady,
  • Philip A. Kern,
  • Hatice Hasturk,
  • Barbara S. Nikolajczyk and
  • Leena P. Bharath

25 February 2019

Circulating fatty acids (FAs) increase with obesity and can drive mitochondrial damage and inflammation. Nicotinamide nucleotide transhydrogenase (NNT) is a mitochondrial protein that positively regulates nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (...

  • Review
  • Open Access
30 Citations
7,298 Views
15 Pages

25 February 2019

Proper positioning of the mitotic spindle is fundamental for specifying the site for cleavage furrow, and thus regulates the appropriate sizes and accurate distribution of the cell fate determinants in the resulting daughter cells during development...

  • Article
  • Open Access
22 Citations
7,622 Views
18 Pages

Structural and Dynamical Order of a Disordered Protein: Molecular Insights into Conformational Switching of PAGE4 at the Systems Level

  • Xingcheng Lin,
  • Prakash Kulkarni,
  • Federico Bocci,
  • Nicholas P. Schafer,
  • Susmita Roy,
  • Min-Yeh Tsai,
  • Yanan He,
  • Yihong Chen,
  • Krithika Rajagopalan and
  • Mohit Kumar Jolly
  • + 11 authors

22 February 2019

Folded proteins show a high degree of structural order and undergo (fairly constrained) collective motions related to their functions. On the other hand, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), while lacking a well-defined three-dimensional structu...

  • Article
  • Open Access
27 Citations
4,506 Views
9 Pages

Silver Nanoparticle-Induced Phosphorylation of Histone H3 at Serine 10 Involves MAPK Pathways

  • Xiaoxu Zhao,
  • Yanying Rao,
  • Jie Liang,
  • Shoukai Lin,
  • Xiumei Wang,
  • Zhangliang Li and
  • Jianhui Huang

22 February 2019

The phosphorylation of histone H3 at serine 10 (p-H3S10) has been shown to be closely correlated with mitotic chromosome condensation. We previously reported that intracellular silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) release Ag ions that alter actin filament dy...

  • Review
  • Open Access
28 Citations
33,272 Views
9 Pages

21 February 2019

Testosterone (17β-Hydroxyandrost-4-en-3-one) is the main sex hormone in males. Maintaining and enhancing testosterone level in men is an incessant target for many researchers. Examples of such research approaches is to utilize specific types of...

  • Review
  • Open Access
68 Citations
8,974 Views
16 Pages

21 February 2019

Rhodomyrtus tomentosa (Aiton) Hassk. is a flowering plant belonging to the family Myrtaceae, native to southern and southeastern Asia. It has been used in traditional Vietnamese, Chinese, and Malaysian medicine for a long time for the treatment of di...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
102 Citations
20,303 Views
17 Pages

Molecular Crowding Tunes Material States of Ribonucleoprotein Condensates

  • Taranpreet Kaur,
  • Ibraheem Alshareedah,
  • Wei Wang,
  • Jason Ngo,
  • Mahdi Muhammad Moosa and
  • Priya R. Banerjee

19 February 2019

Ribonucleoprotein (RNP) granules are membraneless liquid condensates that dynamically form, dissolve, and mature into a gel-like state in response to a changing cellular environment. RNP condensation is largely governed by promiscuous attractive inte...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
4,392 Views
10 Pages

19 February 2019

Polymer particles modified with carbohydrates on their surfaces are of significant interest, because their specific recognition abilities to biomolecules are valuable for developing promising materials in biomedical fields. Carbohydrate-decorated cor...

  • Article
  • Open Access
41 Citations
7,154 Views
14 Pages

The Effect of Cytochalasans on the Actin Cytoskeleton of Eukaryotic Cells and Preliminary Structure–Activity Relationships

  • Robin Kretz,
  • Lucile Wendt,
  • Sarunyou Wongkanoun,
  • J. Jennifer Luangsa-ard,
  • Frank Surup,
  • Soleiman E. Helaly,
  • Sara R. Noumeur,
  • Marc Stadler and
  • Theresia E.B. Stradal

19 February 2019

In our ongoing search for new bioactive fungal metabolites, two new cytochalasans were isolated from stromata of the hypoxylaceous ascomycete Hypoxylon fragiforme. Their structures were elucidated via high-resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS) and nuc...

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Biomolecules - ISSN 2218-273X