The vacuole is an essential organelle for plant growth and development. It is the location for the storage of nutrients; such as sugars and proteins; and other metabolic products. Understanding the mechanisms of vacuolar trafficking and molecule transport across the vacuolar membrane is of great importance in understanding basic plant development and cell biology and for crop quality improvemen...

The nucleolus is a membrane-less organelle formed through liquid-liquid phase separation of its components from the surrounding nucleoplasm. Here, we show that nucleophosmin (NPM1) integrates within the nucleolus via a multi-modal mechanism involving multivalent interactions with proteins containing arginine-rich linear motifs (R-motifs) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA). Importantly, these R-motifs are...

Myo2p is an essential class V myosin in budding yeast with several identified functions in organelle trafficking and spindle orientation. The present study demonstrates that Myo2p is a component of a large RNA-containing complex (Myo2p-RNP) that is distinct from polysomes based on sedimentation analysis and lack of ribosomal subunits in the Myo2p-RNP. Microarray analysis of RNAs that coimmunopr...

Mitochondrial DNA synthesis is necessary for the normal function of the organelle and for the eukaryotic organism as a whole. Here we demonstrate, using two-dimensional agarose gel electrophoresis to analyse replication intermediates, that unidirectional, strand-coupled DNA synthesis is the prevalent mode of mtDNA replication in Drosophila melanogaster. Commencing within the single, extended no...

The fatty acid desaturase (FADS) genes code for the rate-limiting enzymes required for the biosynthesis of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA). Here we report discovery and function of a novel FADS1 splice variant. FADS1 alternative transcript 1 (FADS1AT1) enhances desaturation of FADS2, leading to increased production of eicosanoid precursors, the first case of an isoform modulatin...

The nucleolus is a plurifunctional organelle in which structure and function are intimately linked. Its structural plasticity has long been appreciated, particularly in response to transcriptional inhibition and other cellular stresses, although the mechanism and physiological relevance of these phenomena are unclear. Using MCF-7 and other mammalian cell lines, we describe a structural and func...

The plastid evolved from a symbiotic cyanobacterial ancestor and is an essential organelle for plant life, but its developmental roles in roots have been largely overlooked. Here, we show that plastid translation is connected to the stem cell patterning in lateral root primordia. The RFC3 gene encodes a plastid-localized protein that is a conserved bacterial ribosomal protein S6 of β/γ proteoba...

The ribosome is an essential organelle responsible for cellular protein synthesis. Until recently, the study of ribosome assembly has been largely limited to in vitro assays, with few attempts to reconcile these results with the more complex ribosome biogenesis process inside the living cell. Here, we characterize the ribosome synthesis and assembly pathway for each of the E. coli ribosomal pro...

The repeated rDNA array gives rise to the nucleolus, an organelle that is central to cellular processes as varied as stress response, cell cycle regulation, RNA modification, cell metabolism, and genome stability. The rDNA array is also responsible for the production of more than 70% of all cellular RNAs (the ribosomal RNAs). The rRNAs are produced from two sets of loci: the 5S rDNA array resid...