Inhibiting eukaryotic ribosome biogenesis: Mining new tools for basic research and medical applications

Authors:

Lisa Kofler1, Michael Prattes1 and Helmut Bergler1

doi: 10.15698/mic2019.10.695
Volume 6, pp. 491 to 493, published 20/08/2019.

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Affiliations:

1 Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, NAWI Graz, Humboldtstraße 50-EG, A-8010 Graz, Austria.

Keywords: 

ribosome biogenesis, Inhibitors, yeast, high-throughput screen, rRNA processing.

Corresponding Author(s):

Helmut Bergler, Mailing address: Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, Humboldtstraße 50/EG, A-8010 Graz, Austria; Tel: +43 316 380 5629; Fax: +43 316 380 9898; helmut.bergler@uni-graz.at

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Please cite this article as:

: Lisa Kofler, Michael Prattes and Helmut Bergler (2019). Inhibiting eukaryotic ribosome biogenesis: Mining new tools for basic research and medical applications. Microbial Cell 6(10): 491-493. doi: 10.15698/mic2019.10.695

© 2019 Kofler et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

The formation of new ribosomes is a fundamental cellular process for each living cell and is tightly interwoven with cell cycle control and proliferation. Minimal disturbances of this pathway can result in ribosomopathies including an increased risk for certain cancer types. Thus, targeting ribosome biogenesis is an emerging strategy in cancer therapy. However, due to its complex nature, we are only at the beginning to understand the dynamics of the ribosome biogenesis pathway. One arising approach that will help us to embrace the tight timely cascade of events that is needed to form a new ribosome is the use of targeted chemical inhibition. However, only very few specific chemical inhibitors of the ribosome biogenesis pathway have been identified so far. Here we review our recently published screen to identify novel inhibitors of the ribosome biogenesis pathway in yeast (Awad et al., 2019, BMC Biology). These inhibitors can provide novel tools for basic research and can serve as starting-points to develop new chemotherapeutics.