ER stress: how trypanosomes deal with it.

An efficient response to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is essential for the viability of eukaryotic cells. The causative agent of African sleeping sickness, Trypanosoma brucei, responds to such stress by inducing spliced leader RNA silencing (SLS), resulting in shutdown of mRNA biogenesis. A new study elucidates the activation cascade and its molecular components, which are unique to the ER stress response in trypanosomes.