Feature Channels: Cell Biology

• share
• favorite_border

According to new research, the key to a successful, long-term relationship is for each partner to adapt to the other’s changes over time.

• share
• favorite_border

“Every cancer diagnosis should come with a referral to genetic counseling,” says cancer expert Dr. Antonio Giordano, President of the Sbarro Health Research Organization at Temple University.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from Mayo Clinic have quantified the numbers of various types of immune cells associated with the risk of developing breast cancer. The findings are published in a study in Clinical Cancer Research.

• share
• favorite_border

A compound extracted from a deep-water marine sponge collected near the Bahamas is showing potent antibacterial activity against the drug resistant bacteria methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) also called the “super bug.”

• share
• favorite_border

Day in and day out, the DNA in our cells is damaged for a variety of reasons, and thus DNA-repair systems are fundamental to the maintenance of life. Now UNC scientists have confirmed and clarified key molecular details of one of these repair systems, known as nucleotide excision repair.

• share
• favorite_border

Michigan State University researchers are the first to uncover reasons why a specific type of immune cell acts very differently in females compared to males while under stress, resulting in women being more susceptible to certain diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University will use a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop and test a small, portable blood-adhesion monitor for sickle cell disease patients. They hope to make the device as useful as at-home insulin monitors diabetes patients use to manage their disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Eric Prossnitz, PhD and his team uncovered new details of the aging process. They discovered an altered balance between certain signaling molecules in the smooth muscle cells of blood vessels and the heart. The team also discovered a new class of drugs that combats an important part of the aging process.

• share
• favorite_border

Using tiny snippets of DNA as “barcodes,” researchers have developed a new technique for rapidly screening the ability of nanoparticles to selectively deliver therapeutic genes to specific organs of the body. The technique could accelerate the development and use of gene therapies for such killers as heart disease, cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Research led by scientists at UC San Francisco and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has used brain “organoids” — tiny 3D models of human organs that scientists grow in a dish to study disease — to identify root causes of Miller-Dieker Syndrome (MDS), a rare genetic disorder that causes fatal brain malformations.

• share
• favorite_border

Evolution is often thought of as a gradual remodeling of the genome, the genetic blueprints for building an organism. But in some instance it might be more appropriate to call it an overhaul. Over the past 100 million years, the human lineage has lost one-fifth of its DNA, while an even greater amount was added, report scientists at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Until now, the extent to which our genome has expanded and contracted had been underappreciated.

• share
• favorite_border

Using Harvard-developed technology, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have catalogued more than 20,000 brain cells in one region of the mouse hypothalamus. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, revealed some 50 distinct cell types, including a previously undescribed neuron type that may underlie some of the genetic risk of human obesity. This catalog of cell types marks the first time neuroscientists have established a comprehensive “parts list” for this area of the brain. The new information will allow researchers to establish which cells play what role in this region of the brain.

• share
• favorite_border

Princess Margaret Cancer Centre scientists have discovered a distinct cell population in tumours that inhibits the body’s immune response to fight cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers can now more quickly identify which microbes produce mercury toxins in the environment. These findings will enable a more realistic view of possible methylmercury production in a specific setting.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah chemists publish a new method for ammonia production, using enzymes derived from nature, that generates ammonia at room temperature. As a bonus, the reaction generates a small electrical current.

• share
• favorite_border

A new Berkeley Lab-led study found that the sticky residue left behind by tobacco smoke led to changes in weight and blood cell count in mice. These latest findings add to a growing body of evidence that thirdhand smoke exposure may be harmful.

• share
• favorite_border

Does the brain create additional synapses from the cortical neurons to the new granule cells, or do some cortical neurons transfer connections from mature granule cells to the new granule cells? Researchers have found that the connections are transferred, without adding to the number of synapses.

• share
• favorite_border

Research by The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology will help scientists can better understand how our cells work. The research is part of a four-year, $31.5 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project.

• share
• favorite_border

Studying mice, scientists at Johns Hopkins have fortified evidence that a key purpose of sleep is to recalibrate the brain cells responsible for learning and memory so the animals can "solidify" lessons learned and use them when they awaken -- in the case of nocturnal mice, the next evening.

• share
• favorite_border

The prospect of regenerating bone lost to cancer or trauma is a step closer to the clinic as University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have identified two proteins found in bone marrow as key regulators of the master cells responsible for making new bone.

• share
• favorite_border

Beginning in the mid-1980s, an epidemic of severe invasive infections caused by Streptococcus pyogenes (S. pyogenes), also known as group A streptococcus (GAS), occurred in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. The public became more aware of these sometimes fatal infections, commonly known as the “flesh-eating disease.” A new study in The American Journal of Pathology reports that the bacteria’s full virulence is dependent on the presence of two specific cytotoxins.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore at the National University of Singapore have described how dying cells detach and are expelled from a tissue, and how tissue tension in the region surrounding a dying cell is remodelled.

• share
• favorite_border

Naveen Uli, MD, associate professor of pediatrics and Michiko Watanabe, PhD, professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine served as editors for the special issue of Birth Defects Research Part C: Embryo Today.

• share
• favorite_border

In a new paper published this week in PNAS, researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center, in collaboration with colleagues at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, the University of Colorado School of Medicine and SignalRx, a San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company, describe a potential new class of anti-cancer drugs that inhibit two or more molecular targets at once, maximizing therapeutic efficiency and safety.

• share
• favorite_border

Results of a multicenter study of 129 women with advanced breast cancer show that a blood test that spots cancer-linked DNA correctly predicted that most of those patients with higher levels of the tumor markers died significantly earlier than those with lower levels.

• share
• favorite_border

Unique research being done at OSU Wexner Medical Center is changing the way doctors treat one type of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation. Scientists here are the only ones in the world studying revived human atria, donated after a heart transplant, and translating their findings to improve treatment.

• share
• favorite_border

Extending the roots of team science at its birthplace, Berkeley Lab will soon bring together researchers from the DOE Joint Genome Institute with those from the Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) under one roof. The groundbreaking for the Integrative Genomics Building celebrates the future colocation of two partnering scientific user community resources and launches construction of the first building in the long-term vision for a consolidated biosciences presence on Berkeley Lab’s main site.

• share
• favorite_border

The American Physiological Society will move its physiology research journal titles to Atypon’s Literatum platform, the professional and scholarly publishing industry’s technologically advanced and most widely used online publishing platform for hosting published content.

• share
• favorite_border

Completely locked-in participants report being “happy”

• share
• favorite_border

The ATA has awarded a 2016 ThyCa Research Grant to Trevor Angell, MD, Instructor in the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, for his project entitled "Assessment of Circulation Immune Suppressor Cells for Predicating Treatment Response in Follicular Cell Derived Thyroid Carcinoma." The goal of this prospective study is to determine whether changes in the levels of myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSC) in the peripheral blood of patients with thyroid cancer before and after therapy can serve as a predictive biomarker for response to treatment.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health has developed a new tool to monitor under a microscope how cells attach to an adjacent substrate. Studying adhesion events can help researchers understand how tissues grow, how diseases spread, and how stem cells differentiate into more specific cell types.

• share
• favorite_border

How do white blood cells - the immune cells that race to the sites of infection and inflammation - actually get to their targets? The research of Prof. Ronen Alon has revealed that the white blood cells actually force their way through the blood vessel walls to reach the infection, creating large holes.

• share
• favorite_border

. Jefferson researchers pieced together the three-dimensional atomic structure of a doughnut-shaped protein that acts like a door or ‘portal’ for the DNA to get in and out of the capsid, and have now discovered that this protein begins to transform its structure when it comes into contact with DNA.

• share
• favorite_border

Gene Editing Institute at Christiana Care Health System partners with NovellusDx in BIRD Foundation Grant

• share
• favorite_border

Using immature stem cells to create a miniature model of the gut in the laboratory, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pittsburgh have determined how infection-causing enteroviruses enter the intestine.

• share
• favorite_border

In a second human case, a Yale-led research team has found that a melanoma cell and a white blood cell can fuse to form a hybrid with the ability to metastasize. The finding provides further insight into how melanoma and other cancers spread from solid tumors with implications for future treatment.

• share
• favorite_border

No single neuron produces a thought or a behavior; anything the brain accomplishes is a vast collaborative effort between cells. When at work, neurons talk rapidly to one another, forming networks as they communicate. Scientists at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna and the Rockefeller University in New York are developing technology that would make it possible to record brain activity as it plays out across these networks.

• share
• favorite_border

Barry Milavetz researches epigenetic modifications in infected cells when they’re most easily treatable

• share
• favorite_border

News release about the first person enrolled in the first stem cell trial for cystic fibrosis.

• share
• favorite_border

Biologists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a brain hormone that appears to trigger fat burning in the gut. Their findings in animal models could have implications for future pharmaceutical development.

• share
• favorite_border

• Harvard Medical School scientists and colleagues from the Massachusetts General Hospital have partly restored hearing in mice with a genetic form of deafness. • Scientists altered a common virus, enhancing its ability to enter hair cells in the inner ear that are critical for hearing and to deliver a missing gene essential for hearing and balance. • The new approach overcomes a longstanding barrier to gene therapy for inherited and acquired deafness.

• share
• favorite_border

Using a novel technique to analyze antibodies in fluid collected from intestines of 81 HIV-1-infected and 25 control individuals, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers have found abnormal gut antibody levels in people infected with HIV-1.

• share
• favorite_border

UNC School of Medicine researchers crystalized the structure of LSD attached to a human serotonin receptor of a brain cell, and they may have discovered why an “acid trip” lasts so long.

• share
• favorite_border

When a cell is dividing, two identical structures, called centrosomes, move to opposite sides of the cell to help separate its chromosomes into the new cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Findings could transform cancer drug development and patient care

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers who developed and tested a revolutionary laboratory technique that allows for the endless growth of normal and diseased cells in a laboratory are publicly sharing how the technique works.

• share
• favorite_border

Pulmospheres, three dimensional multicellular spheroids composed of lung cells from individual patients, were shown to be effective in predicting the efficacy of medications for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, according to findings from UAB presented today in JCI Insight.

• share
• favorite_border

Generating mature and viable heart muscle cells from human or other animal stem cells has proven difficult for biologists.

• share
• favorite_border

Cardiac muscle patches in this proof-of-concept research may represent an important step toward the clinical use of 3-D-printing technology, as researchers have grown heart tissue by seeding a mix of human cells onto a 1-micron-resolution scaffold made with a 3-D printer.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team led by Columbia University has discovered that loss of function of the CRKL gene causes kidney and urinary tract defects in people with DiGeorge syndrome, solving a 60-year-old medical mystery.