Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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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.

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University of Montreal researchers have discovered how telomerase, a molecule essential for cancer development, is directed to structures on our genome called telomeres in order to maintain its integrity and in turn, the integrity of the genome.

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A team of engineers led by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, has developed a new approach that marries computer vision and hardware optimization to sort cells up to 38 times faster than is currently possible. The approach could be used for clinical diagnostics, stem cell characterization and other applications.

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Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have discovered some key features that explain just what turns on a protein that is considered to be a master regulator of how the human body uses and stores energy.

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Researchers at NYU and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have identified the mechanism that plays “traffic cop” in meiosis. Their findings shed new light on fertility and may lead to greater understanding of the factors that lead to birth defects.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute report a highly programmable and controlled platform for preparing and experimentally probing synthetic cellular structures.

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Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have made a discovery that, if replicated in humans, suggests a shortage of zinc may contribute to diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which have been linked to defective proteins clumping together in the brain.

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Highlighting an important but unexplored area of evolution, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found evidence that, over hundreds of millions of years, an essential protein has evolved chiefly by changing how it moves, rather than by changing its basic molecular structure. The work has implications not only for the understanding of protein evolution, but also for the design of antibiotics and other drugs that target the protein in question.

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Joslin researchers have identified immune cells that promote growth of beta cells in type 1 diabetes.

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Genes in mitochondria, the “powerhouses” that turn sugar into energy in human cells, shape each person’s risk for heart disease and diabetes.

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University of Chicago scientists have created one of the most expansive analyses to date of the genetic factors at play in complex diseases such as autism and heart disease—by using diseases with known genetic causes to guide them. Identifying trends of co-occurrence among hundreds of diseases in 120 million patients, they created a unique genetic map that has the potential to help diagnose, identify risk factors for and someday develop therapies against complex diseases.

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Stem cell scientists have moved one step closer to producing blood-forming stem cells in a Petri dish by identifying a key regulator controlling their formation in the early embryo, shows research published online today in Cell.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered an important process by which special immune cells in the skin help heal wounds.

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In ongoing research aimed at battling obesity, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have deciphered how new fat cells are formed in energy-storing fat pads.

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A team of cancer researchers at the University of California, San Diego has identified the existence of precursor cells in early prostate cancers. These cells are resistant to androgen-deprivation therapy, and may drive the subsequent emergence of recurrent or metastatic prostate cancer.

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Researchers have developed a model that helps scientists and clinicians understand that complex interactions of a type of bacteria that is the leading cause of peptic ulcers. The discovery may inform changes in the ways doctors treat patients.

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Candida albicans is a double agent: In most of us, it lives peacefully, but for people whose immune systems are compromised by HIV or other severe illnesses, it is frequently deadly. Now a new study from Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School shows how targeting a specific fungal component might turn the fungus from a lion back into a kitten.

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Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that weeks of treatment with a repurposed FDA-approved drug halted the growth of — and ultimately left no detectable trace of — brain tumor cells taken from adult human patients.

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Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have uncovered a new mechanism by which influenza can infect cells – a finding that ultimately may have implications for immunity against the flu.

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Overactivity of a protein that normally cues cells to divide sabotages the body’s natural cellular recycling process, leading to heightened cancer growth and chemotherapy resistance, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.

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Researchers at the University of Arkansas have discovered and characterized a new organism that will help scientists understand the molecular mechanisms and ancestral genetic toolkit that enabled animals and fungi to evolve into diverse, multicellular life forms.

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Scientists at the University of Washington have developed a strategy to slow tumor growth and prolong survival in mice with cancer by targeting and destroying a type of cell that dampens the body's immune response to cancer. The researchers published their findings the week of Sept. 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Now, research from UNC School of Medicine biochemist Charles Carter, PhD, appearing in the September 13 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, offers an intriguing new view on how life began.

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A team of Chinese and US scientists has determined the high-resolution atomic structure of a cell-surface receptor that most strains of HIV use to get into human immune cells. The researchers also showed where maraviroc, an HIV drug, attaches to cells and blocks HIV’s entry.

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Researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have identified a sensor pathway inside cells. These internal sensors are like motion detectors inside a house; they trigger an alarm that signals for help — a response from the immune system.

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A major new finding that will significantly advance efforts to create the world’s first antibody-based AIDS vaccine was published today by researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology.

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Over time, the esoteric and sometimes downright strange quests of science have proven easy targets for politicians and others looking for perceived examples of waste in government — and a cheap headline.

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Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have found a group of proteins essential to the formation of long-term memories.

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Researchers have discovered the details of how cells repair breaks in both strands of DNA, a potentially devastating kind of DNA damage.

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Researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center have developed an innovative system to test how a virus interacts with cells in the body — to see, for example, what happens in lung cells when a deadly respiratory virus attacks them.

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Researchers have figured out the specific job of a protein long implicated in tumors of the nervous system. Their new study details what they call the “matchmaking” activities of a fruit fly protein called Merlin, whose human counterpart, NF2, is a tumor suppressor protein known to cause neurofibromatosis type II when mutated.

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A team of University of Montreal and McGill University researchers have devised a method to identify how signaling molecules orchestrate the sequential steps in cell division.

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A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that a subset of immune cells provide a niche where cancer stem cells survive.

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By investigating regeneration in planarian flatworms, Whitehead Institute researchers have identified a mechanism—involving the interplay of two wound-induced genes—by which the animal can distinguish between wounds that require regeneration and those that do not.

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Ground-breaking new research from a team of evolutionary biologists at Indiana University shows for the first time how asexual lineages of a species are doomed not necessarily from a long, slow accumulation of new mutations, but rather from fast-paced gene conversion processes that simply unmask pre-existing deleterious recessive mutations.

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Cell senescence, an irreversible arrest of proliferation, is thought to be associated with normal aging and is protective against cancer. Penn researchers found that senescent cells undergo changes in their chromatin, similar to changes in cells that are prematurely aging. When the nuclear protein lamin B1 is deleted in senescent cells, large-scale changes in gene expression occurred. This loss of lamin B1 may cause changes in chromatin architecture and add to premature cell aging.

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Problems with a key group of enzymes called topoisomerases can have profound effects on the genetic machinery behind brain development and potentially lead to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to research announced today in the journal Nature. Scientists at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have described a finding that represents a significant advance in the hunt for environmental factors behind autism and lends new insights into the disorder’s genetic causes.

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Researchers have tied mutations in a gene that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative disorders to the toxic buildup of certain proteins and related molecules in cells, including neurons.

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Like volunteers handing out cups of energy drinks to marathon runners, specially engineered “helper cells” transplanted along with stem cells can dole out growth factors to increase the stem cells’ endurance, at least briefly, Johns Hopkins researchers report. Their study, published in the September issue of Experimental Neurology, is believed to be the first to test the helper-cell tactic, which they hope will someday help to overcome a major barrier to successful stem cell transplants.

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By creating a powerful new gene regulation system called CRISPR-on, Whitehead Institute researchers now have the ability to increase the expression of multiple genes simultaneously and precisely manipulate each gene’s expression level. The system is effective in both mouse and human cells as well as in mouse embryos.

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Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania demonstrate for the first time that the immune system influences the skin microbiome. A new study found that the skin microbiome – a collection of microorganisms inhabiting the human body – is governed, at least in part, by an ancient branch of the immune system called complement.

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The technology that peeks underneath clothing at airport security screening check points has great potential for looking underneath human skin to diagnose cancer at its earliest and most treatable stages, a scientist said here today. The report on efforts to use terahertz radiation – “T-rays” – in early diagnosis of skin cancer was part of the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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Glimpses of the nursery of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago are coming from an unlikely venue almost 1 billion miles away, according to the leader of an effort to understand Titan, one of the most unusual moons in the solar system. In the talk here today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, he said that Titan is providing insights into the evolution of life.

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Jan-Michael Peters and his team at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) found that the structure of Chromosomes is supported by a kind of molecular skeleton, made of cohesin. Their discovery is published in the current online-issue of the journal NATURE.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have brought new clarity to the picture of what goes awry in the brain during Parkinson’s disease and identified a compound that eases the disease’s symptoms in mice. Their discoveries, described in a paper published online in Nature Neuroscience on August 25, also overturn established ideas about the role of a protein considered key to the disease’s progress.

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New research led by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and Baylor College of Medicine could aid efforts to diagnose and treat one of the most lethal and hard-to-treat types of cancer.

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By carefully adjusting the function of crucial immune cells called Tregs, scientists may have developed a completely new type of cancer immunotherapy—harnessing the body’s immune system to attack tumors.

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Man, a mouse or a microbe, stress is bad. Experiments in bacteria by molecular biologists have uncovered the mechanism that translates stress, such as exposure to extreme temperature, into temporarily blocked cell growth. Bacteria deal with stress by destroying proteins needed for replication.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have discovered the molecular mechanism by which the deadly Ebola virus assembles, providing potential new drug targets. Surprisingly, the study showed that the same molecule that assembles and releases new viruses also rearranges itself into different shapes, with each shape controlling a different step of the virus’s life cycle.