Journal Club Recap: January 17, 2020

January 17, 2020: At Journal Club, our experts sat down to discuss a paper on dysfunctional RNA proteins and stress granules in MS.

Salapa et al 2018 - Dysfunctional RNA binding proteins and stress granules in multiple sclerosis

Stress granules (SG) are membrane-less organelles (specialized structures in cells) that assemble in response to stressors. There are two types of SG, physiological and pathological. This research group focused on pathological SG, which result from dysfunction in RNA proteins and interrupt normal cellular processes. They focused on two RNA proteins, hnRNP A1 and TIA1 and their results demonstrated that they could potentially play a role in MS pathogenesis. Further research is needed with more samples to understand the role of stress granules and these RNA proteins.