Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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Like the hairs they resemble, cilia come in all lengths, from short to long. But unlike the hair on our heads, the length of sensory cilia on nerve cells in our noses is of far more than merely cosmetic significance. Researchers found a location-dependent pattern in cilia length in the mouse nasal cavity that affects sensitivity to odors. The discovery may also have important implications for the study of sight and touch.

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Salk scientists find key molecular mechanism that underlies deadly behavior in hard-to-treat breast cancer

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Protein aggregates that form after a cell is exposed to heat appear to be part of an organized response to stress. The findings shed new light on the biological nature of protein aggregates, which have been widely considered to be toxic dead-end products, but are increasingly being recognized as a new layer of cellular organization.

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Researchers at the SUNY Upstate Medical University have found that a key cellular enzyme, c-Abl, could be an effective drug target in cancer cells for urologic cancers, such as prostate and kidney.

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An emerging class of drugs called Smac mimetics may lead to a safe and effective treatment to eradicate HIV.

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A new University of Kentucky study in the journal mBio shows that tissue cysts of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, long thought to be dormant, are quite active.

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Scientists at Texas A&M University have made additional progress in understanding the process behind scar-tissue formation and wound healing – specifically, a breakthrough in fibroblast-to-fibrocyte signaling involving two key proteins – that could lead to new advances in treating and preventing fibrotic disease.

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Through the use of custom-engineered synthetic proteins known as monobodies, scientists have now resolved the atomic structure of the fluoride ion. The study sheds light on the evolution of these channels and enables new approaches to modify their function, with potential applications such as the development of novel antibiotics.

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Working in mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed they could reduce glucose production in the liver and lower blood sugar levels. They did so by shutting down a liver protein involved in making glucose, an approach that may help treat type 2 diabetes.

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One of the longstanding debates in science, that has, perhaps unsurprisingly, permeated into the field of stem cell research, is the question of nature versus nurture influencing development. Science on stem cells thus far, has suggested that, as one side of the existential debate holds: their fate is not predestined. But new research from the Neural Stem Cell Institute and Drexel University suggests that the cells’ tabula might not be as rasa as we have been led to believe.

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A multinational team of physicians and scientists from City of Hope, the San Francisco Bay area and Europe recently reported success of a phase II clinical trial of a novel drug against essential thrombocythemia (ET), one of three myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs).

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The new approach shows how cells in the spinal cord synchronize many neurons at once to allow complex movements, which could have implications for treating spinal cord injuries and diseases

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Vaccines to protect against an avian influenza pandemic as well as seasonal flu may be mass produced more quickly and efficiently using technology described today (Sept. 2) by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the journal Nature Communications.

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Upsetting the balance between protein synthesis, misfolding, and degradation drives cancer and neurodegeneration. Recent cancer treatments take advantage of this knowledge with a class of drugs that block protein degradation, known as proteasome inhibitors. Widespread resistance to these drugs limits their success, but Whitehead researchers have discovered a potential Achilles heel in resistance. With such understandings researchers may be able to target malignancy broadly, and more effectively.

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Investigating how the microbiome impacts human health, the labs of Dr. Eran Elinav and Prof. Eran Segal at the Weizmann Institute of Science took a fresh approach: measuring the growth rate of the bacteria. The findings led Dr. Elinav to say, “microbial growth rate reveals things about our health that cannot be seen with any other analysis method.”

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Keratin 17 (K17), a protein previously believed to provide only mechanical support for cancer cells, appears to play a crucial role in degrading a key tumor suppressor protein in cancer cells named p27. This finding, published in the September 1 issue of Cancer Research, is based on the work of researchers in the Department of Pathology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine. They found that K17 has the ability to enter the nucleus of cancer cells, leading to the degradation of p27. The work illustrates for the first time that a keratin can function to promote the development of cancer. Furthermore, the paper details that tumors with high levels of K17 are biologically more aggressive and have a worse prognosis than low K17 tumors.

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A major international collaboration launched by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is laying the technical groundwork for taking individual, atomic-scale portraits of intact viruses, living bacteria and other microscopic samples using the brightest X-ray light on Earth.

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Studies using yeast genetics have provided new, fundamental insights into the cell-division cycle, researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute report.

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Scientists have developed a novel approach to control the activity of enzymes through the use of synthetic, antibody-like proteins known as monobodies. The findings have widespread implications for a broad range of industrial, scientific and medical applications in which enzymes are used.

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Researchers at Harvard Medical School describe a way to force cancer cells to destroy a key metabolic enzyme they need to survive.

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Scientists have not been able to understand and predict how cells evolve in our bodies, and this process is important because evolving cell populations are at the core of drug-resistant infections and cancer development. Now a research team led by Gábor Balázsi, PhD, of Stony Brook University, has developed a synthetic biological model that validates computational predictions of how quickly and in what manner cells change in the presence or absence of a drug. Their findings are published in a paper in Molecular Systems Biology.

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With detection limits down to the zeptomolar range (about 600 molecules in a sample), a new technology can analyze the metabolic composition of individual microbial cells, as well as detect the presence of extremely low levels of environmental contaminants.

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Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have uncovered key cellular functions that help regulate inflammation -- a discovery that could have important implications for the treatment of allergies, heart disease, and cancer.

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Scientists can now watch dynamic biological processes with unprecedented clarity in living cells using new imaging techniques developed by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus. The new methods dramatically improve on the spatial resolution provided by structured illumination microscopy, one of the best imaging methods for seeing inside living cells. Janelia group leader Eric Betzig and postdoctoral fellow Dong Li led the research. Betzig was one of three scientists awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.

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The death of brain cells in Parkinson’s disease may be caused by a form of cellular energy crisis in neurons that require unusually high quantities of energy to carry out their job of regulating movement, researchers at the University of Montreal reported today.

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Salk researchers show how DNA repair proteins sound the alarm to threats, pointing to a novel cancer therapy

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Researchers targeting colorectal cancer stem cells – the root cause of disease, resistance to treatment and relapse – have discovered a mechanism to mimic a virus and potentially trigger an immune response to fight the cancer like an infection.

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UC San Francisco researchers have for the first time developed a method to precisely control embryonic stem cell differentiation with beams of light, enabling them to be transformed into neurons in response to a precise external cue.

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Could the sperm harpoon the egg to facilitate fertilization? That’s the intriguing possibility raised by the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s discovery that a protein within the head of the sperm forms spiky filaments, suggesting that these tiny filaments may lash together the sperm and its target.

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Individuals previously diagnosed with heart disease may be less likely to experience heart failure, heart attacks, or stroke, or to die from these events, if they have higher blood levels of two very closely related proteins, according to a new study led by a UC San Francisco research team.

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North Dakota State University researcher Sangita Sinha is studying the structure of a protein critical to maintaining cellular health. Sinha, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at NDSU, Fargo, received a four-year, $890,900 award from the National Science Foundation to understand the structure and mechanism of a protein called Beclin 1.

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Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute Florida campus have uncovered the structural details of how some proteins interact to turn two different signals into a single integrated output, findings that could aid future drug design.

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When our cells copy their DNA to grow and replicate, it’s vital the process runs smoothly. To get this right, cells use a complex “machine”, made from many hundreds of components.

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In the second part of his lab’s recent one-two punch, Florida State University researcher Daniel Kaplan said he has solved a cell division mystery in a way that will intrigue the makers of cancer-fighting drugs.

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The first use of biological proteins to maneuver chemical polymers has created nerve-like structures that could serve as a gentler interface between nerves and prosthetic devices.

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A collaborative study led by scientists at the Mechanobiology Instituteat the National University of Singapore has described a universal mechanism that regulates forces during epithelial tissue repair.

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The wriggling and writhing of worms may hold clues to the inner workings of our brains, according to scientists at the MRC’s Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial College London. The researchers have developed a pioneering tool to analyse a worm’s posture as it wriggles, and will use the tool to investigate how exactly the worm’s brain controls its movements.

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Scientists report they have deciphered the structure and unusual shape of a bacterial protein that prepares segments of DNA for the insertion of so-called jumping genes. The clamshell shape, they say, has never before been seen in a protein but connects nicely with its function: that of bending a segment of DNA into a 180-degree U-turn.

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A scientific peek into bacteria boudoirs is revealing how “sex” among disease-causing microbes can lead different species or strains to become resistant to antibiotic medications.

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The findings of Virginia Tech’s Biomedical and Engineering Mechanics Associate Professor Sunghwan “Sunny” Jung and his students on somersaulting single-cell organisms could impact the study of how the containment affects the behavior of organisms, used in a wide variety of engineering and scientific applications.

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There may be two new ways to fight AIDS -- using a heat shock protein or a small molecule – to attack fibrils in semen associated with HIV during the initial phases of infection. HIV is most commonly transmitted in semen, which contains amyloid fibrils. These can increase the transmission of HIV by helping the it attach to the membrane surrounding human cells.

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James Bear, PhD, uncovers the intricate mechanisms that allow certain cells to move, discoveries with implications for cancer metastasis.

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For some, TOR may bring to mind a Celtic mountain or perhaps an Internet privacy group. In the world of molecular biology it’s a cellular pathway that’s found in everything from yeast to mammals.

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Using physical chemistry methods to look at biology at the nanoscale, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher has invented a new technology to image single molecules with unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution, thus leading to the first “true-color” super-resolution microscope.

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With every breath you take, microbes have a chance of making it into your lungs. But what happens when they get there? And why do dangerous lung infections like pneumonia happen in some people, but not others? Researchers have started to answer these questions by studying the microbiome of the lungs.

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The liver is unique among organs in its ability to regenerate after being damaged. Exactly how it repairs itself remained a mystery until recently, when researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health discovered a type of cell in mice essential to the process. The researchers also found similar cells in humans.

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Using a specially designed computational tool as a lure, scientists have netted the genomic sequences of almost 12,500 previously uncharacterized viruses from public databases.

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Protein Kinase C is a family of enzymes that controls the activity of other proteins in a cell by attaching chemical tags. That simple act helps determine cell survival or death. When it goes awry, a number of diseases may result. In a study, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reveal a more accurate structure of PKC, providing new targets for fine-tuning the enzyme’s activity as needed to improve human health.

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In what appears to be an unexpected challenge to a long-accepted fact of biology, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have found that ribosomes — the molecular machines in all cells that build proteins — can sometimes do so even within the so-called untranslated regions of the ribbons of genetic material known as messenger RNA (mRNA).