mRNAs sit out the stress in EGP bodies

The stress of glucose starvation in yeast abruptly slows translation. So Hoyle et al. wondered what happens to the stalled translation machinery. They discovered that three translation factors, eIF4E, eIF4G, and Pab1p (E, G, and P), huddled together into four or five cytoplasmic foci. The binding of E, G, and P to untranslated mRNAs was thought to commit the transcripts to translation. But when the translation factors formed quiescent foci, the mRNAs went with them.

Two or three of the foci contained an mRNA-decapping enzyme that is found in P bodies—sites implicated in transcript decay. The accompanying mRNAs entering these...