Stress-Induced Evolution of the Nucleolus: The Role of Ribosomal Intergenic Spacer (rIGS) Transcripts

Abstract

It became clear more than 20 years ago that the nucleolus not only performs the most important biological function of assembling ribonucleic particles but is also a key controller of many cellular processes, participating in cellular adaptation to stress. The nucleolus’s multifunctionality is due to the peculiarities of its biogenesis. The nucleolus is a multilayered biomolecular condensate formed by liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS). In this review, we focus on changes occurring in the nucleolus during cellular stress, molecular features of the nucleolar response to abnormal and stressful conditions, and the role of long non-coding RNAs transcribed from the intergenic spacer region of ribosomal DNA (IGS rDNA).

Keywords

• LLPS
• non-coding RNA
• intrinsically disordered proteins
• membrane-less organelles
• stress response
• nucleolus