Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered a protein that fine-tunes the cellular clock involved in aging.

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– Imagine a day when you visit the doctor’s office for your annual physical. Your physician orders routine tests – cholesterol, glucose and blood count – but they also order a sequence of your genome, all 3 billion letters of it. Routine genomic testing is not far away, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

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Enhancers boost the rate of gene expression from nearby protein-coding genes so a cell can pump out more of a needed protein molecule. A mysterious subset of non-coding RNAs - enhancer RNAs (eRNAs) are transcribed from enhancer sequences. Shedding new light on these elusive eRNAs, researchers showed that CBP, an enzyme that activates transcription from enhancers, binds directly to eRNAs to control patterns of gene expression by acetylation.

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Many of our cells are equipped with a hairlike "antenna" that relays information about the external environment to the cell, and scientists have already discovered that the appearance and disappearance of these so-called primary cilia are synchronized with the process of cellular duplication, called mitosis.

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The worst of the global Zika virus outbreak may be over but many key questions remain, such as why the virus persists in certain tissues after the systemic infection has cleared; how does the immune system counteract the virus and protect against reinfection; what determines the likelihood of long-term complications?

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UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified a protein that is central to the immune system’s ability to recognize and destroy the bacterium responsible for the global tuberculosis (TB) epidemic.

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TAMPA, Fla. – Graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) is the leading cause of non-relapse associated death in patients who receive stem cell transplants.  In a new study published as the cover story in Science Translational Medicine, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers show that a novel treatment can effectively inhibit the development of GVHD in mice and maintain the infection- and tumor-fighting capabilities of the immune system.

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The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy has received a five-year, $1.25 million federal grant to continue its research into how bacteria that cause streptococcal infections can be manipulated.

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In-vitro gametogenesis is an experimental technique that allows scientists to grow embryos in a lab by reprograming adult cells to become sperm and egg cells.

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Scientists at the University of Luxembourg have identified a gene that may provide a new starting point for developing treatments for Alzheimer's disease.

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Antibiotic use represents a special challenge, in which too much of a good thing can be dangerous to public health as a whole. The fight against a common, costly, hospital-acquired infection known as Clostridium difficile, or C. diff offers an illuminating case study in the area of so-called antibiotic stewardship.

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New research out of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine describes a mechanism by which an essential quality control system in cells identifies and destroys faulty genetic material. The findings were published online December 23 in Nature Communications.

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The fly sheds light on how the brain acts to signal 'fullness' and the possibility of conferring resilience against the impact of high-fat diets

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Standard therapy for prostate cancer, the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in American men, is based on blocking androgens, the male sex hormones. However, for some men, prostate cancer recurs despite androgen-deprivation therapy. A team of scientists led by Irwin Gelman, PhD, Professor of Oncology in the Department of Cancer Genetics at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, has identified an 11-gene signature unique to advanced recurrent prostate cancer that they believe will help to identify these aggressive and potentially fatal prostate cancers sooner. The findings have been published online ahead of print in the journal Oncotarget.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. — Predisposition to cancer and cancer progression can result from gene mutations that cause elevated rates of genetic damage. Similarly, carcinogens, including some that are used in chemotherapy during cancer treatment, act by damaging the DNA. A new study from Roswell Park Cancer Institute offers insights into the mechanisms that can lead to genetic mutations and proposes opportunities for developing prognostic tests for specific blood disorders and blood cancers based on these striking findings. The study has been published online ahead of print in the journal PLOS Genetics.

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Writing this week (Jan. 10, 2017) in the journal eLife, a team led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Caitlin Pepperell and McMaster University's Hendrik Poinar provides insight into the everyday hazards of life in the late Byzantine Empire, sometime around the early 13th century, as well as the evolution of Staphylococcus saprophyticus, a common bacterial pathogen.

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New information on the details of a key protein, obtained using DOE user facilities, could help scientists design ways to inhibit tumor growth without activating other tumor-producing pathways.

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NYU Langone Medical Center has announced that internationally recognized surgeon and scientist Diane M. Simeone, MD, will join its Perlmutter Cancer Center on March 1 to serve as associate director for translational research and to lead its newly established pancreatic cancer center.

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Johns Hopkins researchers along with academic and drug industry investigators say they have identified a new biological target for treating spinal muscular atrophy.

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linked changes in social behavior with sublethal exposure to the neonicotinoid pesticide, imidacloprid.

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Cornell and Weill Cornell Medicine researchers report on the use of biomaterials-based organoids in an attempt to reproduce immune-system events and gain a better understanding of B cells.

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In a Yale-led study, Qin Yan and his co-authors focused on a family of enzymes — known as KDM5 — that have been shown in previous studies to be involved in cancer cell growth and spreading.

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A new Yale study suggests that patients with a common form of lung cancer may still benefit from delayed chemotherapy started up to four months after surgery, according to the researchers.

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Irvine, Calif., Jan. 5, 2017 — Scars are often the unwanted and permanent result of wound healing, but University of California, Irvine and University of Pennsylvania researchers have discovered a natural regeneration process that stimulates scar-free skin repair.Their study results, which appear in Science, point the way toward possible clinical treatments for scar-free wound healing, a highly desirable yet unmet need.

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Doctors have found a way to manipulate wounds to heal as regenerated skin rather than scar tissue. The method involves transforming the most common type of cells found in wounds into fat cells – something that was previously thought to be impossible in humans.

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Biologists on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered a new mechanism that likely underlies how we feel force or touch.

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Scientists at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have developed a method to control proteins inside live cells with the flick of a switch, giving researchers an unprecedented tool for pinpointing the causes of disease using the simplest of tools: light.

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TAMPA, Fla. – Lymphoma is the most common blood cancer. The disease occurs when immune cells called lymphocytes multiply uncontrollably. Cancerous lymphocytes can travel throughout the body and form lymph node tumors. The body has two types of lymphocytes that can develop into lymphoma – B cells and T cells. B-cell lymphomas account for 85 percent of all non-Hodgkin lymphomas and 30 percent of those patients are diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

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Wichita State graduate student Pranita Kaphle is researching the migration of cancer cells in a 3D environment. She is targeting glioblastoma multiforme in the brain, a rapid spreading and aggressive high-grade tumor. Kaphle hopes to pursue a career studying the cancer cells and finding a way to inhibit tumor cell invasion.

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The individual and the group: insignificant alone, awesome together. Like ants in a colony or neurons of a brain, the collective action of single actors can beautifully coalesce into something more complex than the parts.

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Yet, how this key innovation evolved remains a mystery locked within the leathery shell of a lizard egg. Now, Dr. Thomas Sanger at Loyola University in Chicago has developed new techniques to understand more about the process of evolutionary diversification by observing development in real time.

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More than 200 species of “true toads” have fully functional inner ears, but cannot fully use them because they have lost their tympanic middle ears, the part of the ear which transmits sound air pressures from the outside world to the inner ear. These “earless” toads rely on sounds to communicate, so why would they lose a sense that is key to their survival and reproduction?

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Scientists on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a new tool for studying the molecular details of protein structure.

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In a new University of Michigan study, gene therapy deployed with immune checkpoint inhibitors demonstrates potential benefit for devastating brain cancer.

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A new genetic-based model may explain how a common form of early-stage breast cancer known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) progresses to a more invasive form of cancer say researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

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University of Virginia Health System researchers have developed a potential therapeutic treatment for dry eye, with human testing to start in March. The drug differs from other treatments of dry eye in that it aims to treat the cause of dry eye instead of masking the symptoms. About the drug The drug, Lacripep (TM), is a topical eye drop that functions differently from conventional  approaches.

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The first FDA-approved clinical trial of its kind in the United States using a person’s own fat-derived adult stem cells to treat shoulder injuries is available at Sanford Health.

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– UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have uncovered the chemical process behind anti-cancer properties of a spicy Indian pepper plant called the long pepper, whose suspected medicinal properties date back thousands of years.

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Penn State biomedical engineers have created a smart, targeted drug delivery system using immune cells to attack cancers.

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Immunotherapy is a fast growing area of cancer research. It involves developing therapies that use a patient’s own immune system to fight and kill cancer. Moffitt Cancer Center is working on a new vaccine that would help early-stage breast cancer patients who have HER2 positive disease.

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An enzyme that plays an active role in inflammation could be a natural way to suppress tumors and ulcers in the colon that are found in colitis associated cancer (CAC), a type of colorectal cancer that is driven by chronic inflammation, according to a new study.

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A new study by researchers from the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) shows that a modest 4 milligrams of extra zinc a day in the diet can have a profound, positive impact on cellular health that helps fight infections and diseases. This amount of zinc is equivalent to what biofortified crops like zinc rice and zinc wheat can add to the diet of vulnerable, nutrient deficient populations.

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Do bats adjust their echolocation calls in response to other bat calls

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One of the main reasons cancer remains difficult to treat is that cancer cells have developed a multitude of mechanisms that allow them to evade destruction by the immune system. One of these escape mechanisms involves a type of immune cell called myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs). A recent study led by Sharon Evans, PhD, Professor of Oncology and Immunology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, provides new insight into how MDSCs enable tumor cells to circumvent immune attack and offer the potential for improving cancer immunotherapy. The research has been published today in the journal eLife.

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Whitehead Institute researchers provide insight into a specific gene pathway that appears to regulate the growth, structure, and organization of the human cortex. They also demonstrate that 3D human cerebral organoids can be effective in modeling the molecular, cellular, and anatomical processes of human brain development.

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A new study led by scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) sheds light on a signaling circuit in cells that drives therapy resistance in prostate cancer. The researchers found that targeting the components of this circuit suppresses advanced prostate cancer development.

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Cincinnati Children’s researchers report in Nature Immunology a new mechanism that controls blood cell function and several possible molecular targets for treating myelodysplasia syndromes (MDS) – a group of pre-malignant disorders in which bone marrow does not produce enough healthy blood cells. MDS can lead to acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a fast-spreading blood cancer that can be deadly if not treated promptly.

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A new study led by Cedars-Sinai investigators dramatically illustrates the complexity of cancer by identifying more than 2,000 genetic mutations in tissue samples of esophageal tumors. The findings reveal that even different areas of individual tumors have various genetic patterns.

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New research publishing December 27 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology characterizes the ability of populations to interbreed and exchange genes as a function of the level divergence of their genomes.

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Scientists from the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore at the National University of Singapore have discovered that cadherin clusters, which are well known for forming junctions between cells, also play a role in stabilising the cell cortex.