Researchers from the Developmental Biology Laboratory¹, in collaboration with researchers from the Pasteur Laboratory (ENS Department of Chemistry), have recently developed a method to control the appearance of membraneless organelles in cells. This study was published in the journal Nature Communication².

The formation of these specialised compartments is not well known.

By combining methods and concepts used in physics, chemistry and biology, these researchers have made it possible to take a leap forward in understanding the genesis of membraneless organelles. The method they developed and presented in this study is called ArtiGranules. It makes it possible to control the assembly in the cell of artificial compartments with a given biochemical composition and biophysical properties. This approach highlights the essential role of RNAs in the formation and size of organelles.

In the future, this method may be useful to understand the formation and role of other membraneless organelles.

This article was the subject of a short note on the INC (the Chemistry Institute of the CNRS) website.

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¹Team: Compartmentation and intracellular traffic of mRNPs: /en/research/developmental-biology-laboratory/compartmentation-and-intracellular-traffic-of-mrnps

²RNA is a critical element for the sizing and the composition of phase-separated RNA-protein condensates, M. Garcia-Jove Navarro, S. Kashida, R. Chouaib, S. Souquere, G. Pierron, D. Weil, Z. Gueroui, Nature Communications, July 2019 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11241-6