Abstract
A cell and its world of molecular machines and organelles is complex—and imperfect, full of small errors and looming catastrophes. It is challenged by stresses, environmental insults and general entropy, but works remarkably well. One reason for this is the existence of quality control. Quality control acts at the level of the important macromolecules, proteins, RNA and DNA, as well as at the organelle and whole‐cell level. It serves to edit mistakes and generally maintain functionality. Biological processes are allowed to be a bit messy and slightly unreliable as long as quality control exists. This focus in The EMBO Journal presents eight reviews, which relate to quality control in molecular and cellular biology. Some reviews are directly about quality control mechanisms, while others are more tangentially connected to it. Some of the processes discussed are clearly appreciated as ‘quality control’ and the term is frequently used, for example in ER quality control. Other quality control processes have other names, but they have in common that they serve to check for correctness and functionality of already produced macromolecules or organelles. For the quite diverse types of quality control, there are general questions that allow some comparison. First, what is being detected? Does the cell detect the healthy and correct molecule/complex/organelle and allow its persistence? Or is the unhealthy and incorrect version detected and removed? This dichotomy is related to whether degradation or persistence is the default behavior. Second, how is correctness versus incorrectness detected? Is it qualitatively or quantitatively different? Third, how are the mistakes dealt with? Are they corrected/remodeled or are they removed/degraded? And finally, what happens if quality control does not function well? Several of the reviews explore the relationship between quality control and human disease conditions. The purpose of bringing together reviews from experts in seemingly unrelated areas, …
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