Nucleolar condensates: A cellular machinery necessary for T cell activation.

Naive T cells must shift from a state of quiescence to an active metabolic state. To do this, T cells must ramp up their production of ribosomes. In this issue, Zhou et al. (2023. J. Cell Biol.https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.202201096) identify DDB1 and Cul4-associated factor 13 (DCAF13) as a T cell activation-induced nucleolar protein that functions to enhance ribosome biosynthesis. DCAF13 binds to nucleophosmin 1 (NPM1) to form a biomolecular condensate that functions, in part, by recruiting the endonuclease UTP23 into the nucleolus.