Ross Buchan

Eukaryotic cells respond to cellular stresses by the inhibition of translation and the accumulation of mRNAs in cytoplasmic RNA-protein (ribonucleoprotein) granules termed stress granules and P-bodies. An unresolved issue is how different stresses affect formation of messenger RNP (mRNP) granules. In the present study, we examine how sodium azide (NaN(3)), which inhibits mitochondrial respiration, affects formation of mRNP granules as compared with glucose deprivation in budding yeast. We observed that NaN(3) treatment inhibits translation and triggers formation of P-bodies and stress granules. The composition of stress granules induced by NaN(3) differs from that of glucose-deprived cells by containing eukaryotic initiation factor (eIF)3, eIF4A/B, eIF5B and eIF1A proteins, and by lacking the heterogeneous nuclear RNP (hnRNP) protein Hrp1. Moreover, in contrast with glucose-deprived stress granules, NaN(3)-triggered stress granules show different assembly rules, form faster and independently from P-bodies and dock or merge with P-bodies over time. Strikingly, addition of NaN(3) and glucose deprivation in combination, regardless of the order, always results in stress granules of a glucose deprivation nature, suggesting that both granules share an mRNP remodeling pathway. These results indicate that stress granule assembly, kinetics and composition in yeast can vary in a stress-specific manner, which we suggest reflects different rate-limiting steps in a common mRNP remodeling pathway.

In this issue, Takahara and Maeda (2012) discover that together, Pbp1 and sequestration of the TORC1 complex in cytoplasmic mRNP stress granules provides a negative regulatory mechanism for TORC1 signaling during stress.

Eukaryotic cells contain at least two types of cytoplasmic RNA-protein (RNP) granules that contain nontranslating mRNAs. One such RNP granule is a P-body, which contains translationally inactive mRNAs and proteins involved in mRNA degradation and translation repression. A second such RNP granule is a stress granule which also contains mRNAs, some RNA binding proteins and several translation initiation factors, suggesting these granules contain mRNAs stalled in translation initiation. In this chapter, we describe methods to analyze P-bodies and stress granules in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, including procedures to determine if a protein or mRNA can accumulate in either granule, if an environmental perturbation or mutation affects granule size and number, and granule quantification methods.

Recent results indicate that nontranslating mRNAs in eukaryotic cells exist in distinct biochemical states that accumulate in P bodies and stress granules, although the nature of interactions between these particles is unknown. We demonstrate in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that RNA granules with similar protein composition and assembly mechanisms as mammalian stress granules form during glucose deprivation. Stress granule assembly is dependent on P-body formation, whereas P-body assembly is independent of stress granule formation. This suggests that stress granules primarily form from mRNPs in preexisting P bodies, which is also supported by the kinetics of P-body and stress granule formation both in yeast and mammalian cells. These observations argue that P bodies are important sites for decisions of mRNA fate and that stress granules, at least in yeast, primarily represent pools of mRNAs stalled in the process of reentry into translation from P bodies.