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

• Main Author: Vladimir N. Uversky
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-09-01
• Series: Molecules
• Subjects: intrinsically disordered protein; intrinsically disordered protein region; liquid–liquid phase transition; protein–protein interaction; protein–nucleic acid interaction; proteinaceous membrane-less organelle; fuzzy complex.
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/24/18/3265

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.