The Nucleolus Takes Control of Protein Trafficking Under Cellular Stress

The nucleolus is a highly dynamic nuclear substructure that was originally described as the site of ribosome biogenesis. The advent of proteomic analysis has now allowed the identification of over 4500 nucleolus associated proteins with only about 30% of them associated with ribogenesis (1). The great number of nucleolar proteins not associated with traditionally accepted nucleolar functions indicates a role for the nucleolus in other cellular functions such as mitosis, cell-cycle progression, cell proliferation and many forms of stress response including DNA repair (2). A number of recent reviews have addressed the pivotal role of the nucleolus in the cellular stress response (1, 3, 4). Here, we will focus on the role of Nucleolin and Nucleophosmin, two major components of the nucleolus, in response to genotoxic stress. Due to space constraint only a limited number of studies are cited. We thus apologize to all our colleagues whose works are not referenced here.