ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Severe osmotic compression triggers a slowdown of intracellular signaling, which can be explained by molecular crowding.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 112 papers.
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Who cites it
112 citing papers in PubMed.
- Hyperosmotic stress induces PARP1-mediated HPF1-dependent mono(ADP-ribosyl)ation.FEBS letters · 2026Article
- Mechanics of compression-driven morphogenesis.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2026Review
- Understanding Osmolality as a Critical Process Parameter in Mammalian Muscle Cell Culture and Biomanufacturing.ACS omega · 2026Review
- ER tethering and active transport govern condensate diffusion during hyperosmotic stress.Genome biology · 2026Article
- How does cytoplasmic crowding affect reaction rates?Molecular cell · 2026Review
- Decreased cytoplasmic crowding via inhibition of ribosome biogenesis can trigger Candida albicans filamentous growth.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Protein aggregation as a bistable switch in bacterial cell fate: from adaptive dormancy to cytotoxic death.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Osmotic pressure regulates DNA labelling and transcription with dCas9-SunTag system in live cells.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Frog-killing chytrid fungus deploys different strategies to regulate intracellular pressure in developmental states that have or lack a cell wall.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- High-throughput single-cell density measurements enable dynamic profiling of immune cell and drug response from patient samples.Nature biomedical engineering · 2025Article
- Article
- The phenomenon of anhydrobiosis-structural and functional changes in yeast cells.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2025Review
- Underestimated role of macromolecular crowding in bioengineeredMaterials today. Bio · 2025Article
- Molecular and Biophysical Perspectives on Dormancy Breaking: Lessons from Yeast Spore.Biomolecules · 2025Review
- WNK1-dependent water influx is required for CD4Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Cellular and Nuclear Forces: An Overview.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Review
- The Hidden Influences of Macromolecular Crowding: A New Frontier in Cellular Biology and Medicine.Sub-cellular biochemistry · 2025Review
- Article
- Nucleocytoplasmic transport senses mechanical forces independently of cell density in cell monolayers.Journal of cell science · 2024Article
52 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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7 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Regulation of the cellular volume is fundamental for cell survival and function. Deviations from equilibrium trigger dedicated signaling and transcriptional responses that mediate water homeostasis and volume recovery. Cells are densely packed with proteins, and molecular crowding may play an important role in cellular processes. Indeed, increasing molecular crowding has been shown to modify the kinetics of biochemical reactions in vitro; however, the effects of molecular crowding in living cells are mostly unexplored. Here, we report that, in yeast, a sudden reduction in cellular volume, induced by severe osmotic stress, slows down the dynamics of several signaling cascades, including the stress-response pathways required for osmotic adaptation. We show that increasing osmotic compression decreases protein mobility and can eventually lead to a dramatic stalling of several unrelated signaling and cellular processes. The rate of these cellular processes decreased exponentially with protein density when approaching stalling osmotic compression. This suggests that, under compression, the cytoplasm behaves as a soft colloid undergoing a glass transition. Our results shed light on the physical mechanisms that force cells to cope with volume fluctuations to maintain an optimal protein density compatible with cellular functions.
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