Rai Akash, Jakob Ursula
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Biological Chemistry, Michigan Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2025 Jun;93:103303. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2025.103303. Epub 2025 Apr 12.
Inorganic polyphosphate (polyP) is a ubiquitous biopolymer whose functional repertoire has rapidly expanded over the past few years. How polyP controls these seemingly unrelated functions, which range from stress resistance, motility, and DNA damage control in bacteria to blood clotting, cancer and neurodegeneration in mammals, remains largely unknown. Here, we review what is known about its synthesis and degradation pathways in mammalian cells, provide an overview over the cell compartment-specific roles of polyP, and focus on recent studies, which showed that many of polyP's activities appear to be mediated by its ability to either solubilize, scaffold, or phase separate proteins. Future studies will show how polyP achieves these vastly different effects on proteins and hence controls its many functions.
无机多聚磷酸盐（polyP）是一种普遍存在的生物聚合物，在过去几年中其功能范围迅速扩大。polyP如何控制这些看似不相关的功能，从细菌中的应激抗性、运动性和DNA损伤控制到哺乳动物中的血液凝固、癌症和神经退行性变，在很大程度上仍然未知。在这里，我们综述了关于其在哺乳动物细胞中的合成和降解途径的已知信息，概述了polyP在细胞区室特异性的作用，并重点关注最近的研究，这些研究表明polyP的许多活性似乎是由其溶解、支架或使蛋白质相分离的能力介导的。未来的研究将揭示polyP如何对蛋白质产生这些截然不同的影响，从而控制其众多功能。
