Feature Channels: Cell Biology

• share
• favorite_border

Mosquito bite sites are not just itchy, irritating nuisances - they also make viral infections spread by the insects far worse, new research has found.

• share
• favorite_border

Despite their nonchalant appearance, chameleons are formidable predators, capturing their prey by whipping out their tongues with incredible precision. They can even capture preys weighing up to 30% of their own weight. In collaboration with the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle de Paris, researchers from the Université de Mons (UMONS) and the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) have studied this amazing sticky weapon.

• share
• favorite_border

Three Pioneering Scientists Recognized for Breakthroughs in Astrophysics, Organic Chemistry, and Molecular Biology.

• share
• favorite_border

In a small study looking at pain assessments in adults with sickle cell disease, researchers at Johns Hopkins says overall, those treated long-term with opioids often fared worse in measures of pain, fatigue and curtailed daily activities than those not on long-term opioids.

• share
• favorite_border

Moffitt Cancer Center researchers found that these assumptions may be incorrect. In a new article published in the journal Cancer Research, they report that certain subpopulations can be predicted and do not develop randomly as previously thought.

• share
• favorite_border

Rice University scientists have synthesized a novel anti-cancer agent, Thailanstatin A, which was originally isolated from a bacterial species collected in Thailand.

• share
• favorite_border

New research has discovered peptides from two crop species that have antimicrobial effects on bacteria implicated in food spoilage and food poisoning They are similar in structure to a human peptide used to guard against beer-spoiling bacteria

• share
• favorite_border

"Clock genes" turn on and off, or "Express", in rhythmic patterns throughout the body to regulate physiological conditions and behaviour. When and how these genes express, especially in tissues outside the brain, is still poorly understood. Until now, scientists have lacked sufficient means to simultaneously monitor gene rhythms in specific tissues in freely moving subjects.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study led by researchers the National Eye Institute suggests how the genesis of rod photoreceptors may have occurred to give rise to nocturnal mammals.

• share
• favorite_border

Using tiny, alpaca-derived, single-domain antibody fragments, Whitehead Institute scientists have developed a method to perturb cellular processes in mammalian cells, allowing them to tease apart the roles that individual proteins play in these pathways. With improved knowledge of protein activity, scientists can better understand not only basic biology but also how disease corrupts cellular function and identify potential therapeutics to rectify these aberrations.

• share
• favorite_border

A tiny mirror could make a huge difference for scientists trying to understand what’s happening in the micron-scale structures of living cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the Mechanobiology Institute at the National University of Singapore have developed a new method, using super-resolution microscopy, to determine the length of stretched proteins in living cells, and monitor the dynamic binding of proteins, at sub-second timescales.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Johns Hopkins report that a type of lab-grown human nerve cells can partner with heart muscle cells to stimulate contractions. Because the heart-thumping nerve cells were derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, the researchers believe the cells — known as sympathetic nerve cells — will allow them to grow nerve cells that replicate particular patients’ diseases of the nervous system.

• share
• favorite_border

An exhaustive look at how bacteria hold their ground and avoid getting pushed around by their environment shows how dozens of genes aid the essential job of protecting cells from popping when tensions run high.

• share
• favorite_border

Click here to go directly to the Diabetes News Source on Newswise

• share
• favorite_border

Berkeley Lab chemists have successfully married chemistry and biology to create reactions never before possible. They did this by replacing the iron normally found in the muscle protein myoglobin with iridium, a noble metal not known to be used by living systems.

• share
• favorite_border

According a new study, fetal exposure to commonly used SRI drugs may affect brain activity in newborns. The researchers suggest that the effects of drugs on fetal brain function should be assessed more carefully, Indications for preventive medication should be critically evaluated, and non-pharmacological interventions should be the first-line treatment for depression and anxiety during pregnancy.

• share
• favorite_border

By tweaking just one or two genes, Cornell University researchers have altered the patterns on a butterfly’s wings. It’s not just a new art form, but a major clue to understanding how the butterflies have evolved, and perhaps to how color patterns – and other patterns and shapes – have evolved in other species.

• share
• favorite_border

Mechanism of genome replication arrest provides pioneering insight about cell life span and aging

• share
• favorite_border

A new study explains how cancer cells use energy to fuel this switch between motion and proliferation. The researchers identified for the first time a connection between a cancer gene that controls motility and how cancer cells metabolize energy to move and divide so quickly.

• share
• favorite_border

How much impact do genes have on behavioral changes? Dr. Luciano Matzkin of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) want to better understand the genetic underpinnings of ecologically relevant behaviors.

• share
• favorite_border

By combining local radiation therapy and anti-cancer vaccines with checkpoint inhibitors, researchers from the University of Chicago – working with mice – were able to increase the response rate for these new immunotherapy agents. This sequence of treatments could open up unresponsive tumors to immune cell infiltration, boosting immunologic control of tumor growth.

• share
• favorite_border

An oft-quoted proverb says it takes a village to raise a child, and new research from ecologists at LSU and Rice University suggests that a similar concept may be at work in natural ecosystems. The research, which appears in this week’s Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that the early life experiences of individual animals can have wide-reaching impacts on entire species.

• share
• favorite_border

Texan Chuck Dandridge became the first adult in the U.S. to receive a newly modified stem cell transplant that uses genetically engineered blood cells from a family member, announced researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center where the procedure was performed.

• share
• favorite_border

The microbiome is like a fingerprint: every person's community of microbes is complex and unique. But the underlying dynamics, the interactions between the microbes that shape these microbial ecosystems, may have something in common. To investigate, researchers from the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, led by Amir Bashan, PhD, and Yang-Yu Liu, PhD, analyzed data from large metagenomic datasets (e.g. the Human Microbiome Project and Student Microbiome Project) to look at the dynamics of the gut, mouth and skin microbiomes of healthy subjects.

• share
• favorite_border

The Botox toxin has a sweet tooth, and it’s this craving for sugars – glycans, to be exact – that underlies its extreme ability target neuron cells in the body … while giving researchers an approach to neutralize it.

• share
• favorite_border

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on May 26 showed that participants who received a recombinant therapy— the present standard in the United States — developed antibodies or “inhibitors” to the treatments at almost twice the rate as those whose treatments were made from human plasma.

• share
• favorite_border

An industry-driven consortium has developed a national roadmap designed to chart the path to large-scale manufacturing of cell-based therapeutics for use in a broad range of illnesses including cancer, neuro-degenerative diseases, blood and vision disorders and organ regeneration and repair.

• share
• favorite_border

Siobhan Malany, Ph.D., director of Translational Biology at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute at Lake Nona (SBP) and founder of the Institute’s first spin-off company, Micro-gRx, Inc., has been awarded $435,000 to study atrophy in muscle cells in microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS).

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in Pennsylvania and China, report that not only are there distinct differences in key cellular processes and molecular signatures between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA) but, more surprisingly, there are joint-specific differences in RA. The findings help explain why drugs treating RA vary in effect and provide a potential new template for precisely targeting treatment for each and every ailing joint.

• share
• favorite_border

Baylor Scott & White Research Institute scientists presented breakthrough findings at this year’s Digestive Disease Week® (DDW). DDW is the world’s largest and most prestigious gathering of physicians, researchers and academics in the fields of gastroenterology, hepatology, endoscopy and gastrointestinal surgery.

• share
• favorite_border

Knowing the exact number of molecules located at specific junctures in cells can be a critical measure of health as well as disease. For example, abnormally high numbers of growth factor receptors on cells can be an indication of cancerous and precancerous states. Now, a simplified method known as qPAINT uses the blinking pattern of the light that marks each molecule, to find, count, and study individual molecules that are just a few nanometers apart.

• share
• favorite_border

By watching brightly glowing HIV-infected immune cells move within mice, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have shown how infected immune cells latch onto an uninfected sister cell to directly transmit newly minted viral particles.

• share
• favorite_border

Joel McGlothlin’s team found that the ancestors of garter snakes gained toxin-resistant nerves almost 40 million years ago.

• share
• favorite_border

Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report they have developed an experimental laboratory test that accurately clocks the “speed” of human brain tumor cell movement along a small glass “track.” The assay, so far tested on the cells of 14 glioblastoma patients, has the potential, they say, to predict how quickly and aggressively a given cancer might lethally spread.

• share
• favorite_border

Cancer stem cells are like zombies — even after a tumor is destroyed, they can keep coming back. These cells have an unlimited capacity to regenerate themselves, making more cancer stem cells and more tumors. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have now unraveled how pre-leukemic white blood cell precursors become leukemia stem cells.

• share
• favorite_border

As the promise of using regenerative stem cell therapies draws closer, a consortium of biomedical scientists reports about 30 percent of induced pluripotent stem cells they analyzed from 10 research institutions were genetically unstable and not safe for clinical use. In a study published June 9 by the journal Stem Cell Reports, the multi-institutional research team reports on the comprehensive characterization of a large set of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

• share
• favorite_border

Incorrectly folded proteins can cause a variety of diseases. Danish researchers have found a solution for preventing this misfolding.

• share
• favorite_border

Publication in Genes & Development: researchers at the Université libre de Bruxelles, ULB develop new techniques to assess the fate of stem cells in vivo.

• share
• favorite_border

A study appearing in the journal PLOS ONE this week shows that bioluminescence -- the production of light from a living organism -- is more widespread among marine fishes than previously understood.

• share
• favorite_border

Evidence of DNA “scrunching” may one day lead to a new class of drugs against viruses. DNA may go through a repetitive cycle of contraction and elongation, or “scrunching,” to generate the forces required to drive the DNA into a virus during replication. A better understanding of viral reproduction could be the basis of new ways to fight infectious pathogens.

• share
• favorite_border

Once inside the human body, infectious microbes like Salmonella face a fluid situation. They live in a watery world, surrounded by liquid continually flowing over and abrading their cell surfaces--a property known as fluid shear.

• share
• favorite_border

Prostate cancer physicians look to provide personalized medicine to prostate cancer patients with a new medical device.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists from Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research have shown that a narrow wavelength of ultraviolet light safely killed drug-resistant MRSA bacteria in mice, suggesting its potential to reduce surgical site infections.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Colorado Cancer Center study published online in Oncogene describes mutational landscape of bladder cancer cell lines, demonstrates that alterations in these cells lines do indeed match changes in samples of human bladder cancer and shows genes and gene pathways that may be functionally involved in the ability of bladder cancer to resist therapy.

• share
• favorite_border

Sperm with specific 'looks' are selected to fertilise bird eggs, say scientists from the University of Sheffield.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke have discovered that boosting the transport of mitochondria along neuronal axons enhances the ability of mouse nerve cells to repair themselves after injury. The study, “Facilitation of axon regeneration by enhancing mitochondrial transport and rescuing energy deficits,” which has been published in The Journal of Cell Biology, suggests potential new strategies to stimulate the regrowth of human neurons damaged by injury or disease.

• share
• favorite_border

To better understand the pathogenic bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and develop more effective treatments, University of California San Diego researchers examined the Staph “pan-genome” — the genomes of 64 different strains that differ in where they live, the types of hosts they infect and their antibiotic resistance profiles. This effort, published June 6 by PNAS, places all Staph genes into one of two categories: the core genome or the dispensable genome.

• share
• favorite_border

An investigational immunotherapy drug being tested in the treatment of a rare form of skin cancer known as Merkel cell carcinoma has been found to be well tolerated with a clinical benefit seen in up to 42 percent of patients who failed prior treatment and were observed for at least six months.

• share
• favorite_border

Patients who don’t respond to treatments that use their own immune cells to destroy tumors, called tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, share changes in mechanisms that switch genes on or off in those cells, according to study results presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) on June 4 in Chicago.