In a recent study, a research team at the University of Freiburg led by Tanja Bhuiyan and Sebastian Arnold and including SFB 1381 PIs Friedel Drepper (Z01), Pitter Huesgen (Z01, B13) and Thorsten Hugel (B07, Z03) revealed how a disordered protein segment helps connect two key steps of gene expression: the reading of genes and the editing of their RNA products.
The protein in question, TAF2, is part of the general transcription factor TFIID. However, a specific, so-called intrinsically disordered region (IDR) within the protein allows TAF2 to move away from the TFIID complex and to alternate between different nuclear compartments — enabling it to interact with RNA-processing machinery and help shape how gene messages are finalised.
The study highlights that flexible protein regions like the IDR of TAF2 not only shape the spatial organisation of molecular processes, but could also act as key regulators of specific functions through targeted localisation to nuclear speckles — a mechanism that may also be relevant in disease-related processes.
The study has been published in Cell Reports (Bhuiyan et al. 2025).
An original press release of the University of Freiburg can be found here.
Figure: Confocal microscopy images (cropped section) of live HeLa cells (cervical cancer cells) expressing individual TFIID subunits as GFP fusions. White arrowheads indicate clusters resembling nuclear speckles. Source: Open Access Publication, Cell Reports, 2025
