Physicists find that organelles grow in random bursts

All animals, plants and fungi are ekaryotic cells, which are highly structured objects.

The internal bits of these cells are called the nucleus, which store genetic information, and the mitochondria, which produce chemical energy. They don't know how they organize themselves into these compartments.

Physicists at Washington University found that cells can control average fluctuations in organelle size. By demonstrating that organelle sizes obey a universal scaling relationship that the scientists predict theoretically, their new framework suggests that organelle grow in random bursts from a limited pool of building blocks.

There was a study published in January.

According to the assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, the steps by which the cells are grown are not an orderly assembly.

The noise in organelle size within a narrow window is maintained by the bursts. A general biophysical mechanism by which cells can maintain, on average, reliable yet plastic organelle sizes, is provided by burstlike growth.

Cells can grow or shrink as environments demand. The size of the cell must be maintained. The study provides new insights into the quantitative principles underlying organelle size control, which biologists have previously identified.

The team is excited to explore how these assembly mechanisms are utilized across different species and cell types. The patterns of robustness will be examined to see what they can teach us about how to harness organelle assembly for bioengineering applications and how to spot defects in organelle biogenesis.

The pattern of organ robustnesselle size is shared between yeast and iPS cells. These bursts are likely to be organelle-specific and possibly species specific.

More information can be found in the Physical Review Letters. There is a book titled "PhysRevLett.130.018401."

Journal information: Physical Review Letters