Feature Channels: Cell Biology

• share
• favorite_border

Sonia Rocha-Sanchez, Ph.D., an associate professor of oral biology in the Creighton University School of Dentistry, and an expert in the biology and physiology of the inner ear, has developed a method to temporally modify the expression of the retinoblastoma-1 gene in mice. Modulation of the RB1 gene can allow for the regrowth of cells in the inner ear and potentially restore hearing and balance caused by the loss of sensory hair cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: anxiety and fermented foods, glucose transport, research reproducibility, new MRI approach, enterprise transformation, prostate cancer, oceanography, HPV vaccine, probiotics, clinical research.

• share
• favorite_border

The discovery opens the door the potential strategies to treat "iron overload" disorders. Those who get the genetic disorders are most often people of Northern European descent.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have gleaned a key cellular mechanism of how the body adjusts glucose levels, an important process that when abnormal can promote diabetes, cancer, and rare genetic diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Countering previously held beliefs, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered that inhibiting the immune receptor protein TLR4 may not be a wise treatment strategy in all cancers.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and its Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center are reporting a potentially important discovery in the battle against one of the most devastating forms of leukemia that accounts for as many as one in five children with a particularly aggressive form of the disease relapsing within a decade.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Florida Health researchers have discovered that a rabbit virus can deliver a one-two punch, killing some kinds of cancer cells while eliminating a common and dangerous complication of bone marrow transplants.

• share
• favorite_border

Leveraging a novel system designed to examine the double-strand DNA breaks that occur as a consequence of gene amplification during DNA replication, Whitehead Institute scientists are bringing new clarity to the causes of such genomic damage. Moreover, because errors arising during DNA replication and gene amplification result in chromosomal abnormalities often found in malignant cells, these new findings may bolster our understandings of certain drivers of cancer progression.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found that state-specific odor “blindness” exists in female mice, who cannot sense the odor of male mice when in diestrus, the period of sexual inactivity during the reproductive cycle, pointing to new avenues for studying senses and behavior.

• share
• favorite_border

Wistar Institute scientists have identified how a specific variant of a key protein complex found in human cells called condensin can reorganize a cell’s genetic architecture in such a way as to promote senescence, making it an important facilitator in a cell’s anticancer ability.

• share
• favorite_border

New research shows that the close linkage between the physical properties of amino acids, the genetic code, and protein folding was likely the key factor in the evolution from building blocks to organisms when Earth’s first life was emerging from the primordial soup.

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: neurology, cancer, immunotherapy, Alan Alda present science award, genetics, vision, lung cancer, prostate cancer, environmental health.

• share
• favorite_border

Study explains why some melanoma tumors are resistant to BRAF inhibitor treatment

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: income inequality, climate change, genetics, cancer, precision medicine, medical imaging, schizophrenia, research funding, molecular biology and skin cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have uncovered a new molecular mechanism - a function of the NONO protein - whereby cells protect their genome from the detrimental effect of UV radiation and govern DNA replication in cellular mitosis. A recent study investigates what happens when this molecular mechanism malfunctions.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the Stowers Institute have shown that a molecule called elongin A assists with transcription.

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: genetics, cancer, nanotech, elderly care, marketing research, energy, children's health, and immunology.

• share
• favorite_border

Studying zebrafish, investigators at The Saban Research Institute and the Heart Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles discovered a new source for cells that can develop into coronary vessels and have identified the signaling protein, a chemokine called CXCL12, which guides this process.

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: genetics and cancer, diabetes and blindness, nanotech, engineering, personalized medicine, energy, and e-cigarettes.

• share
• favorite_border

MicroRNA can serve as a “decoder ring” for understanding complex biological processes, a team of New York University chemists has found. Their study points to a new method for decrypting the biological functions of enzymes and identifying those that drive diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Using human embryonic stem cells, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute created a model that allows them to track cellular behavior during the earliest stages of human development in real-time. The model reveals, for the first time, how autonomic neurons and blood vessels come together to form the neurovascular unit.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists for the first time have precisely measured a protein’s natural “knee-jerk” reaction to the breaking of a chemical bond – a quaking motion that propagated through the protein at the speed of sound.

• share
• favorite_border

Stem cell scientists at McMaster can now directly convert adult human blood cells to both central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) neurons as well as neurons in the peripheral nervous system (rest of the body) that are responsible for pain, temperature and itch perception. This means that how a person’s nervous system cells react and respond to stimuli, can be determined from his blood.

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: gun regulation, psychology and altruism, big data, threats to coral reefs, extra-terrestrial life, personalized diets, metabolic syndrome and heart health, new drug target to treat arthritis, and archeologists find oldest tools.

• share
• favorite_border

In a first, the Weizmann Institute’s Dr. Karina Yaniv and a team of scientists have determined how the lymphatic system develops in the embryo … and grown lymphatic cells in the lab. Using zebrafish, they showed that the cells originate in a vein niche that harbors angioblasts. Besides solving this century-old puzzle, their work can shed light on disease.

• share
• favorite_border

In a report on what is believed to be the first small clinical trial of its kind, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say they have safely used immune cells grown from patients’ own bone marrow to treat multiple myeloma, a cancer of white blood cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Why do some cancer cells break away from a tumor and travel to distant parts of the body? A team of oncologists and engineers from the University of Michigan teamed up to help understand this crucial question.

• share
• favorite_border

New research from the University of Southampton has identified how changes in the cell membrane play a pivotal role in how the Hepatitis C virus replicates.

• share
• favorite_border

An important link between the human body clock and the immune system has relevance for better understanding inflammatory and infectious diseases, discovered collaborators. They report how a critical white blood cell, when exposed to bacteria, makes the biological clock inside the macrophage stop, allowing it to become inflamed.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at The University of Manchester have made an important discovery about how certain cells stick to each other to form tissue.

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: tick-borne disease, 3D printing, childhood cancer and obesity, nursing, low-back pain, brain cells, and fluid dynamics.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, working closely with researchers at the National Institutes of Health, have mapped out the structure of an important protein involved in cellular function and nervous system development.

• share
• favorite_border

Salk scientists find a single molecule that controls the fate of mature sensory neurons

• share
• favorite_border

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have gained ground toward developing more targeted therapies for the most common childhood brain tumor. The findings appear today in the Journal of Molecular Biology. The findings involve the DDX3X gene. In 2012, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project highlighted DDX3X as a promising focus for efforts to develop targeted therapies against medulloblastoma. Such treatments target the genetic mistakes that give rise to the brain tumor’s four subtypes.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have identified a protein on the surface of human red blood cells that serves as an essential entry point for invasion by the malaria parasite. This discovery opens up a promising new avenue for the development of therapies to treat and prevent malaria.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have determined the molecular structure of one of the proteins in the fine fibers of the brain plaques that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. This molecule, called amyloid beta-42, is toxic to nerve cells and is believed to provoke the disease cascade.

• share
• favorite_border

Messenger RNA (mRNA) levels dictate most differences protein levels in fast-growing cells when analyzed using statistical methods that account for noise in the data, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Chicago and Harvard University.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute have identified the molecular “glue” that builds the brain connections that keep visual images clear and still, even as objects or your eyes move. Using mouse models, the researchers demonstrate that image stabilization depends upon two proteins, Contactin-4 and amyloid precursor protein, binding during embryonic development.

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: WWII and PTSD, stem cells, cancer, racial segregation, supplements and glaucoma, medical research, cybersecurity, vision research, and physics.

• share
• favorite_border

The Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI) has launched a video competition as part of its #authenticate campaign, which is designed to raise awareness in the life science community about the powerful role cell authentication can play in improving research reproducibility and fidelity.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from Berkeley Lab and the University of Hawaii at Manoa have shown for the first time that cosmic hot spots, such as those near stars, could be excellent environments for the creation of molecular precursors to DNA.

• share
• favorite_border

The onion, a humble root vegetable, is proving its strength outside the culinary world -- in an artificial muscle created from onion cells. Unlike previous artificial muscles, this one, created by researchers from National Taiwan University, can either expand or contract to bend in different directions depending on the driving voltage applied. The finding is published this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified mutations in two genes that cause a fatal lung scarring disease known as familial pulmonary fibrosis.

• share
• favorite_border

Research sheds new light on how DNA repair occurs in the cell. Expanded repeats of the CAG/CTG trinucleotide in yeast shift to the periphery of the cell nucleus for repair. This shift is important for preventing repeat instability and genetic disease and is a previously unrecognized step for repetitive DNA to be maintained and to prevent chromosome damage.

• share
• favorite_border

In proof-of-concept experiments, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine demonstrate the ability to tune medically relevant cell behaviors by manipulating a key hub in cell communication networks. The manipulation of this communication node, reported in this week’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, makes it possible to reprogram large parts of a cell’s signaling network instead of targeting only a single receptor or cell signaling pathway.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers reveal how a Rab protein that controls intracellular trafficking supports HIV-1 assembly by promoting high levels of an important membrane lipid.

• share
• favorite_border

In recent years, research has shown that cancerous cells have a different metabolism – essential chemical and nutritional changes needed for supporting the unlimited growth observed in cancer– than normal cells. Now, scientists at The Wistar Institute have identified a way that cells can reprogram their metabolism to overcome a tumor-suppressing mechanism known as senescence, solidifying the notion that altered metabolism is a hallmark of cancer progression.

• share
• favorite_border

DNA can be damaged by different environmental insults, such as ultraviolet light, ionizing radiation, oxidative stress or certain drugs. If the DNA is not repaired, cells may begin growing uncontrollably, leading to the development of cancer. Therefore, cells must maintain an intricate regulatory network to ensure that their DNA remains intact. Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have discovered a novel mechanism that controls a cell’s response to DNA damage.

• share
• favorite_border

Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: new biotech treatment for radiation proctitis, 3D printing in children's health, work and brain health, the importance of medical research, multi-institute collaboration on medical education technology, tax cuts and the economy, cancer survival, and Alzheimer's research.

• share
• favorite_border

The mechanism by which embryos receive nutrition during the first 11 weeks of pregnancy has been revealed by University of Manchester scientists.