Repairing or degrading damaged lysosomes
Many key lysosomal repair proteins have an intrinsic propensity to form biomolecular condensates. This points to an emerging paradigm where phase separation, not just individual protein actions, may be a central feature in orchestrating the response to membrane damage.
Recent work has separately highlighted the roles of protein condensates and lipid domains in membrane repair. This raises the intriguing possibility of a mechanistic synergy, where protein and lipid phase separation coregulate each other to mount an integrated response to damage.
A key question is how cells choose between the repair and degradation of a damaged lysosome. The recent discovery of pathways that sense lipid packing defects suggests a new framework, where the biophysical state of the membrane itself helps determine organelle fate.
https://www.cell.com/trends/cell-biology/fulltext/S0962-8924(26)00033-4
