Two scientists are calling out to their fellow researchers to help them investigate the role played by "cloud-like" blobs that assemble inside cells.

Naming the blobs "assemblages," Jeffrey Toretsky and Peter Wright are seeking to discover the specific critical role the structures play in cellular function. They made the appeal in a message published in the Journal of Cell Biology last September 1. 

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The assemblages were discovered 50 years ago and scientists believe they're vital to cells. To this day, however, their precise role remains unknown.

Toretsky and Wright's review was entitled "Assemblages: Functional units formed by cellular phase separation".

Toretsky, a professor in the department of oncology and pediatrics at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, said he seeks to discover their function in order to understand what they do in different disease states, including Ewing Sarcoma.

Ewing Sarcoma, a disease Toretsky specializes in, is a cancerous tumor found in the soft tissue and bone of young adults and children. The condition is usually found in the long bones of the legs and arms, pelvis and chest.

Toretsky researched different literature written about the structures along with physicists, chemists and co-author Wright, who is based at the department of integrative structural and computational biology at The Scripps Research Institute in California.

What they discovered was that the assemblages are usually synthesized from amino acids.  Scientists believe these assemblages are capable of interacting with other cellular proteins and RNA sequences.

Toretsky and Wright have suggested the assemblages can potentially be used as treatment targets despite their precise role having yet to be discovered,

"Current drug-discovery dogma suggests that it is very hard to make a small molecule to prevent two structured proteins from interacting. However, small molecules have a greater likelihood of disrupting intrinsically disordered protein-protein interactions ... This review links together very basic biologic phenomena of protein interaction with the potential for new drug discovery," Toretsky stated.