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Supramolecular Fuzziness of Intracellular Liquid Droplets: Liquid–Liquid Phase Transitions, Membrane-Less Organelles, and Intrinsic Disorder

Cells are inhomogeneously crowded, possessing a wide range of intracellular liquid droplets abundantly present in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic and bacterial cells, in the mitochondrial matrix and nucleoplasm of eukaryotes, and in the chloroplast’s stroma of plant cells. These proteinaceous membrane-l...

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Autor principal: Uversky, Vladimir N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6767272/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31500307
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules24183265
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author Uversky, Vladimir N.
author_facet Uversky, Vladimir N.
author_sort Uversky, Vladimir N.
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description Cells are inhomogeneously crowded, possessing a wide range of intracellular liquid droplets abundantly present in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic and bacterial cells, in the mitochondrial matrix and nucleoplasm of eukaryotes, and in the chloroplast’s stroma of plant cells. These proteinaceous membrane-less organelles (PMLOs) not only represent a natural method of intracellular compartmentalization, which is crucial for successful execution of various biological functions, but also serve as important means for the processing of local information and rapid response to the fluctuations in environmental conditions. Since PMLOs, being complex macromolecular assemblages, possess many characteristic features of liquids, they represent highly dynamic (or fuzzy) protein–protein and/or protein–nucleic acid complexes. The biogenesis of PMLOs is controlled by specific intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and hybrid proteins with ordered domains and intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs), which, due to their highly dynamic structures and ability to facilitate multivalent interactions, serve as indispensable drivers of the biological liquid–liquid phase transitions (LLPTs) giving rise to PMLOs. In this article, the importance of the disorder-based supramolecular fuzziness for LLPTs and PMLO biogenesis is discussed.
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spelling pubmed-67672722019-10-02 Supramolecular Fuzziness of Intracellular Liquid Droplets: Liquid–Liquid Phase Transitions, Membrane-Less Organelles, and Intrinsic Disorder Uversky, Vladimir N. Molecules Perspective Cells are inhomogeneously crowded, possessing a wide range of intracellular liquid droplets abundantly present in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic and bacterial cells, in the mitochondrial matrix and nucleoplasm of eukaryotes, and in the chloroplast’s stroma of plant cells. These proteinaceous membrane-less organelles (PMLOs) not only represent a natural method of intracellular compartmentalization, which is crucial for successful execution of various biological functions, but also serve as important means for the processing of local information and rapid response to the fluctuations in environmental conditions. Since PMLOs, being complex macromolecular assemblages, possess many characteristic features of liquids, they represent highly dynamic (or fuzzy) protein–protein and/or protein–nucleic acid complexes. The biogenesis of PMLOs is controlled by specific intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and hybrid proteins with ordered domains and intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs), which, due to their highly dynamic structures and ability to facilitate multivalent interactions, serve as indispensable drivers of the biological liquid–liquid phase transitions (LLPTs) giving rise to PMLOs. In this article, the importance of the disorder-based supramolecular fuzziness for LLPTs and PMLO biogenesis is discussed. MDPI 2019-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6767272/ /pubmed/31500307 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules24183265 Text en © 2019 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Perspective
Uversky, Vladimir N.
Supramolecular Fuzziness of Intracellular Liquid Droplets: Liquid–Liquid Phase Transitions, Membrane-Less Organelles, and Intrinsic Disorder
title Supramolecular Fuzziness of Intracellular Liquid Droplets: Liquid–Liquid Phase Transitions, Membrane-Less Organelles, and Intrinsic Disorder
title_full Supramolecular Fuzziness of Intracellular Liquid Droplets: Liquid–Liquid Phase Transitions, Membrane-Less Organelles, and Intrinsic Disorder
title_fullStr Supramolecular Fuzziness of Intracellular Liquid Droplets: Liquid–Liquid Phase Transitions, Membrane-Less Organelles, and Intrinsic Disorder
title_full_unstemmed Supramolecular Fuzziness of Intracellular Liquid Droplets: Liquid–Liquid Phase Transitions, Membrane-Less Organelles, and Intrinsic Disorder
title_short Supramolecular Fuzziness of Intracellular Liquid Droplets: Liquid–Liquid Phase Transitions, Membrane-Less Organelles, and Intrinsic Disorder
title_sort supramolecular fuzziness of intracellular liquid droplets: liquid–liquid phase transitions, membrane-less organelles, and intrinsic disorder
topic Perspective
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6767272/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31500307
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules24183265
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