Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 6, 2026

Quantifying Tissue-Specific Proteostatic Decline in Caenorhabditis elegans
Published on: September 7, 2021
Single-cell aging trajectories reveal a dynamic coupling between nuclear size and proteasome concentration
Michael Mobaraki1,2, Changhui Deng1, Jiashun Zheng1
1Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Abstract:
Yeast replicative aging is cell autonomous and thus a good model for mechanistic study from a dynamic systems perspective. Utilizing an engineered strain and a high-throughput microfluidic device, we analyzed the dynamic trajectories of thousands of single yeast mother cells throughout their lifespan, using fluorescent reporters that cover a wide range of biological processes. We found that proteostasis markers are the strongest predictors of the lifespan of individual cells. We observed that proteasome concentration in the nucleus shows dynamics distinct from those in the cytoplasm, with much more rapid decrease during aging; such behavior can be accounted for by the increase of nuclear size in a simple mathematical model of transport. We hypothesize that nuclear enlargement may dilute key nuclear factors, potentially contributing to aging. Our large-scale single-cell dynamics dataset provides a valuable resource for analyzing relationships among aging hallmarks.
More Related Videos
08:52Measurement of Protein Turnover Rates in Senescent and Non-Dividing Cultured Cells with Metabolic Labeling and Mass Spectrometry
Published on: April 6, 2022
14:27A Cell-Free Assay Using Xenopus laevis Embryo Extracts to Study Mechanisms of Nuclear Size Regulation
Published on: August 8, 2016
Related Concept Videos
Mitochondria
Replicative Cell Senescence
Cells Coordinate Growth and Proliferation
Regulation of Nuclear Protein Sorting
The Nucleolus
Protein Dynamics in Living Cells
Fluorescent recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is a fluorescent-protein-based detection technique used to quantify protein movement rates within the cell. This method exposes a small portion of the cell to an intense laser beam. The laser beam causes permanent photobleaching of the fluorophore-tagged proteins in the exposed region. As the bleached...