Cellular Stress Responses: A Balancing Act

A PKGarious Balancing Act

The pathologically hypertrophied and failing heart is a battlefield in a war that would make even George Lucas proud. On the one side, you have hemodynamic, neurohormonal, morphological, and cellular/molecular dark forces urging the ventricle toward decompensation and ultimate demise. On the other, Jedi signaling cascades try valiantly to stave off the impending disaster. Alas, unlike the movie...

Initiating Cellular Stress Responses

The phosphoinositide 3-kinase related kinases (PIKKs) mediate responses to diverse stresses, including DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), abnormal replication fork progression, the recognition of premature termination codons in mRNAs, and inadequate nutrient availability. Rigorous control of these kinases limits cellular damage and promotes cell viability in the presence of stress. Control mechan...

Cellular Stress Responses

A balancing act for autophagin.

Autophagy is a tightly regulated catabolic process whereby cells degrade their constituents to dispose of unwanted cytoplasmic elements and recycle nutrients for cellular remodeling. Studies of autophagy in mammals have elicited substantial interest because it is linked to a range of physiologic and pathologic states. In this issue of the JCI, Mariño et al. uncover a role for autophagy in a bal...

MicroRNA responses to cellular stress.

Recent work has begun to explore the instrumental role that small noncoding RNA species, particularly microRNAs (miRNA), have both in classifying human tumors and in directing embryonic development. These studies suggest that developmental programs in essentially all organisms studied are set, in part, by varied expressions of miRNAs and that neoplasia is characterized by altered expression of ...