Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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Dr. Hanna Mikkola and researchers at UCLA’s Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have identified a novel progenitor cell and a related cell communication pathway key to growth of a healthy placenta.The team’s discovery gives scientists a “tool box” for understanding the developmental hierarchy of progenitor cells that initiate growth of the placenta, and greatly increases the knowledge of what might cause pregnancy complications.

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Most people have experienced the effects of circadian-rhythm disruption. To have any hope of modulating our biological “clocks,” we need to first understand the physiology at play. A new JGP study helps explain some of the biophysical processes underlying regulation of circadian rhythms.

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A new discovery may help explain the surprisingly strong connections between sleep problems and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

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One protein called Notch, which has well-known roles in the development of multiple tissues, plays an essential role in triggering T-cell development. Notch signaling induces expression of genes that promote the maturation of T cells and discourage alternative cell fates. Deficiency of the Notch target gene Hes1 in blood stem cells results in extremely low T-cell numbers, and could shed light on how normal cells are transformed in the context of cancer.

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Using a new method to catch elusive “jumping genes” in the act, researchers have found two human proteins that are used by one type of DNA to replicate itself and move from place to place. The discovery breaks new ground in understanding the arms race between a jumping gene driven to colonize new areas of the human genome and cells working to limit the risk posed by such volatile bits of DNA.

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Our epigenome is a set of chemical switches that turn parts of our genome off and on and are impacted by environmental factors including diet, exercise and stress. Research at the Buck Institute reveals that aging also effects the epigenome in human skeletal muscle. The study provides a method to study sarcopenia, the degenerative loss of muscle mass that begins in middle age.

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Biologists from the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT have found that tumor cells with mutated p53 can be made much more vulnerable to chemotherapy by blocking another gene called MK2.

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Adelaide researchers have found that a specific gene plays an important role in suppressing lymphoma, a type of blood cell cancer.

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Diseases affecting the kidneys represent a major and unsolved health issue worldwide. The kidneys rarely recover function once they are damaged by disease, highlighting the urgent need for better knowledge of kidney development and physiology.

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Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have developed a new method that generates a high-resolution protein structure from crystals one-million times smaller than those needed for X-ray crystallography, the most common method for determining protein structure. The new technique, called MicroED, has the potential to accelerate structural biologists' efforts and to expand the repertoire of proteins whose high-resolution structures can be solved.

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Regardless of the way in which muscle was damaged, either through trauma or disease, Xin was strongly correlated to the degree of damage.

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Australian researchers have found that zinc can ‘starve’ one of the world’s most deadly bacteria by preventing its uptake of an essential metal.

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Scientists have identified a pathway that regulates fibrosis, suggesting a possible pharmacologic approach to treat patients with a broad range of fibrotic diseases.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report that disrupting the light-dark cycle of mice increased their susceptibility to inflammatory disease, indicating that the production of a key immune cell is controlled by the body’s circadian clock.

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Two groups of scientists at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have made complementary discoveries that break new ground on efforts to turn back the body’s clock on cellular activity, paving the way for a better understanding of stem cells, tissue growth, and regeneration.

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Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a chain reaction that triggers the regrowth of some damaged nerve cell branches, a discovery that one day may help improve treatments for nerve injuries that can cause loss of sensation or paralysis.

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Clay, a seemingly infertile blend of minerals, might have been the birthplace of life on Earth. Or at least of the complex biochemicals that make life possible, Cornell University biological engineers report in the Nov. 7 online issue of the journal Scientific Reports, published by Nature Publishing.

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Whitehead Institute scientists report that the gene mutated in the rare hereditary disorder known as Birt-Hogg-Dubé cancer syndrome prevents activation of mTORC1, a critical nutrient-sensing and growth-regulating cellular pathway.

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New evidence suggests that aneuploidy patterns of chromosome deletion or amplification that are recurrent among tumors actually represent a driving force during tumor evolution and are very frequent in cancer.

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A small molecule called VIP, known to synchronize time-keeping neurons in the brain’s biological clock, has the startling effect of desynchronizing them at higher dosages, says a research team at Washington University in St. Louis. Neurons knocked for a loop by a burst of VIP are better able to re-synchronize to abrupt shifts in the light-dark cycle like those that make jet lag or shift work so miserable.

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Only a few genetic changes are needed to spur the evolution of new species—even if the original populations are still in contact and exchanging genes. Once started, however, evolutionary divergence evolves rapidly, ultimately leading to fully genetically isolated species, report scientists from the University of Chicago in the Oct 31 Cell Reports.

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Imagine a 1950s horror movie monster—a creeping, gluey tangle of gunk that strangles everything around it. That’s what amyloid plaques are like when they form in body tissues. These gooey protein clumps are associated with many chronic and debilitating disorders, and scientists have made enormous strides in understanding how these structures play roles in disease.

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Body temperature follows a 24-hour rhythm, peaking during the day, low at night. The benefit might be the conservation of energy while sleeping. It is also critical to be able to adapt to changes in ambient temperature regardless of the time of day. A new mouse study shows how body temperature rhythms are synchronized while maintaining the ability to adapt to changes in environmental temperature day or night.

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Researchers at NIH have developed two new microscopes, both the first of their kind. The first captures small, fast moving organisms at an unprecedented rate and the second displays large cell samples in three dimensions while decreasing the amount of harmful light exposure to the cells. Both microscopes surpass in clarity any other currently on the market.

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Using a discovery platform whose components range from yeast cells to human stem cells, Whitehead Institute scientists have identified a novel Parkinson’s disease drug target and a compound capable of repairing neurons derived from Parkinson’s patients.

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Our ability to hear relies on hair cells, sensory receptors that mechanically amplify low-level sound that enters the inner ear through a transduction channel. A new study in The Journal of General Physiology could help lead to a definitive identification of this mystery channel.

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Ram Dixit’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that a protein named after the katana, or samurai sword, plays a crucial role in patterning the “skeleton” inside plant cells. The work provides a clue to the long-standing mystery of how the cytoskeletons within both plant and animal cells become organized in function-specific patterns.

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Bioengineers from the University of California, San Diego have created a new method for analyzing RNA transcripts from samples of 50 to 100 cells. The approach could be used to develop inexpensive and rapid methods for diagnosing cancers at early stages, as well as better tools for forensics, drug discovery and developmental biology.

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A UCLA study is the first to identify a biological clock able to gauge the age of most human tissues. Some parts of the anatomy, like a woman’s breasts, age faster than the rest of the body.

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Cell biologists have discovered that message-relaying proteins inside cells always initiate the cellular projections that act as hands to help cells "crawl." The messenger protein network was known to be required for directional movement but scientists now know that it can self-activate spontaneously to direct random movement as well.

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Johns Hopkins researchers used suction to learn that individual “molecular muscles” within cells respond to different types of force, a finding that may explain how cells “feel” the environment and appropriately adapt their shapes and activities.

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Scientists report in Nature they have found a novel and unexpected molecular switch that could become a key to slowing some of the ravages of getting older as it prompts blood stem cells to age.

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A gene important in skin tanning has been linked to higher risk for testicular cancer in white men, according to a study led by scientists from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the University of Oxford in England. Nearly 80 percent of white men carry a variant form of this gene, which increased risk of testicular cancer up to threefold in the study.

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With the flick of a light switch, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies can change the shape of a protein in the brain of a mouse, turning on the protein at the precise moment they want. This allows the scientists to observe the exact effect of the protein's activation. The new method, described in the October 16 issue of the journal Neuron, relies on specially engineered amino acids----the molecules that make up proteins----and light from an LED. Now that it has been shown to work, the technique can be adapted to give researchers control of a wide variety of other proteins in the brain to study their functions.

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Researchers have developed a new technology to sort human cells according to their stiffness, which might one day help doctors identify certain diseases in patients, according to a new study.

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Over the last decade or so, biologists have mustered an ever-growing appreciation for the essential role of microbial communities in a diversity of environments. “We’re recognizing that the biosphere is run by microbes at every level,” notes University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Medical Microbiology and Immunology Margaret McFall-Ngai. “They are the pivotal, central players in the health of the planet.”

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Prolactin has an important function in the liver, but how important? Researchers, using an animal model, found the animals with extra prolactin had larger livers, regenerated their livers faster after partial removal, and were significantly more likely to survive liver surgery compared to animals that couldn’t process prolactin.

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A specific protein once thought to exist only in the brain may play a crucial role in a deadly form of thyroid cancer, as well as other cancers, and provide a fresh target for researchers seeking ways to stop its progression, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report today in Cancer Cell.

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Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have developed a new way to parse and understand how special proteins called “master regulators” read the genome, and consequently turn genes on and off.

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The way cells divide to form new cells — to support growth, to repair damaged tissues, or simply to maintain our healthy adult functioning — is controlled in previously unsuspected ways UC San Francisco researchers have discovered. The findings, they said, may lead to new ways to fight cancer.

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A protein that is increased by endurance exercise has been isolated and given to non-exercising mice, in which it turned on genes that promote brain health and encourage the growth of new nerves involved in learning and memory, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.

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Our ability to detect heat, touch, tickling and other sensations depends on our sensory nerves. Now, for the first time, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have identified a gene that orchestrates the crucially important branching of nerve fibers that occurs during development. The findings were published online today in the journal Cell.

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For the first time, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have isolated and characterized the progenitor cells that eventually give rise to malignant hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumors – the most common form of liver cancer. The researchers found ways to identify and isolate the HCC progenitor cells (HcPC) long before actual tumors were apparent.

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New research has shown that the stomach naturally produces more stem cells than previously realized, likely for repair of injuries from infections, digestive fluids and the foods we eat.

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Having recently discovered a set of powerful gene regulators that control cell identity in a few mouse and human cell types, Whitehead Institute scientists are now showing that these regulators—which they named “super-enhancers”—act across a vast array of human cell types and are enriched in mutated regions of the genome that are closely associated with a broad spectrum of diseases.

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A team of scientists from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and their collaborators from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have found that a novel noncoding ribonucleic acid (RNA) offers the potential for "switching on" of tumour suppressors that have been shut off.

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Johns Hopkins researchers, working with elderly mice, have determined that combining gene therapy with an extra boost of the same stem cells the body already uses to repair itself leads to faster healing of burns and greater blood flow to the site of the wound.

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Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have found unexpected similarities between proteins that were thought to be fundamentally different. The team published a new study in Nature showing that non-specific proteins actually have the ability to be specific about where they bind to RNA – seeking out and binding with particular sequences of nucleotides.

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Two gene alterations pair up to promote the growth of leukemia cells and their escape from anti-cancer drugs.

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A tiny but unexpected change to a segment of RNA in a single-cell organism looks a lot like a mistake, but is instead a change to the genetic information that is essential to the organism’s survival.