Now that the researchers know how this condensate, known as the fibrillar center, forms, they may be able to more easily study its function in cells. Our hypothesis for why this process keeps evolving is that it might make it easier to assemble ribosomes by compartmentalizing the different biochemical reactions,” says Eliezer Calo, an associate professor of biology at MIT and the senior author of the study. “If you look across the tree of life, the basic structure and function of the ribosome has remained quite static however, the process of making it keeps evolving. Biologists do not yet fully understand why this shift happened. However, in amniotes (which include reptiles, birds, and mammals), the nucleolus developed a condensate that acts as a third compartment. Until that point, the nucleolus, whose role is to help build ribosomes, was divided into two compartments. The findings could help to explain a major evolutionary shift, which took place around 300 million years ago, in how the nucleolus is organized. Without this protein, known as TCOF1, this condensate cannot form. MIT biologists have now discovered that a single scaffolding protein is responsible for the formation of one of these condensates, which forms within a cell organelle called the nucleolus. However, it is not well understood how proteins and other biomolecules come together to form these assemblies within cells. Inside all living cells, loosely formed assemblies known as biomolecular condensates perform many critical functions.
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