You may have forgotten this from biology class, but the nucleolus is the cell’s ribosome factory. But there’s more to the nucleolus than just making ribosomes. How well it balances these tasks influences a cell’s health and life span. It gets bigger to contain them, but mysteriously this also shortens a cell’s or organism’s life. When food is restricted, or a metabolic pathway is silenced or slowed down, nucleoli shrink, making fewer ribosomes, and cells live longer.

Source: New York Times May 20, 2018 16:52 UTC