Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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Researchers discover role of H2S as defense mechanism against oxidative stress and antibiotics.

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St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists show that a gene essential for normal development of the lymphatic system also plays a critical role in forming the valves that help maintain the body’s normal fluid balance.

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Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have uncovered a mechanism that governs how cells become specialized during development. Their findings could have implications for human health and disease and appear in the November 10 online edition of the journal Cell.

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By knocking out a key regulatory protein, scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland dramatically boosted insulin sensitivity in lab mice, an achievement that opens a new door for drug development and the treatment of diabetes.

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A tree outside researcher Pratul Agarwal’s office window provided the inspiration for a discovery that may ultimately lead to drugs with fewer side effects.

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The embryonic enzyme pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) has a well-established role in metabolism and is highly expressed in human cancers. Now, a team led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in advance online publication of the journal Nature that PKM2 has important non-metabolic functions in cancer formation.

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St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists discover that a post-production addition to most proteins can serve as a key to mediate protein interactions, which are at the foundation of life.

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Few options are availabe to prevent the painful episodes of sickle cell disease. But a University of Michigan Health System study reveals a protein trigger that could lead to a new treatment for sickle cell patients.

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A protective response to starvation may promote heart failure, according to a study just published in Cell Metabolism. Two proteins that team up to conserve energy when food is scarce also limit energy production in the heart—a situation that can prove fatal when the heart is stressed and in need of an energy boost.

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After more than a century of study, mysteries still remain about the process of meiosis—a special type of cell division that helps insure genetic diversity in sexually-reproducing organisms. Now, researchers at Stowers Institute for Medical Research shed light on an early and critical step in meiosis.

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An international team of researchers led by investigators in the U.S. and Germany has shed light on the inner workings of the endocycle, a common cell cycle that fuels growth in plants, animals and some human tissues and is responsible for generating up to half of the Earth’s biomass. This discovery, led by a geneticist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and reported Oct. 30 in Nature, leads to a new understanding of how cells grow and how rates of cell growth might be increased or decreased, which has important implications in both agriculture and medicine.

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Whitehead Institute scientists have determined that master transcription factors determine the genes regulated by key signaling pathways. By manipulating these pathways, scientists may find new ways to treat cancer and other diseases.

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University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers have uncovered a previously unknown molecular pathway that is critical to understanding cardiac arrhythmia and other heart muscle problems. Understanding the basic science of heart and muscle function could open the door to new treatments.

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A 40-year search for a gene that causes some one-celled sea creatures to flash at night and is also found in others that produce deadly red tides, has been successfully culminated by a group of scientists led by Thomas E. DeCoursey, PhD, professor of biophysics and physiology at Rush University Medical Center.

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The neurodegeneration associated with Alzheimer's disease is thought to be caused by small, soluble A-beta complexes, partly through their ability to induce excess calcium influx into cells, which stimulates cell death. A new study reveals that A-beta oligomers elevate calcium by forming calcium-permeable pores in the plasma membrane.

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Two previously unassociated proteins known to be overly active in a variety of cancers bind together to ignite and sustain malignant brain tumors, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports this week in the journal Cancer Cell.

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For better and for worse, human health depends on a cell’s motility –– the ability to crawl from place to place. In every human body, millions of cells –are crawling around doing mostly good deeds ––– though if any of those crawlers are cancerous, watch out.

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An international research team has discovered that a pervasive human RNA modification provides the physiological underpinning of the genetic regulatory process that contributes to obesity and type II diabetes.

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Differences in the levels of two key metabolic enzymes may explain why some people are more susceptible to liver damage, according to a study in the October 17 issue of The Journal of Cell Biology (www.jcb.org).

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Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and two other institutions have uncovered a vast new gene regulatory network in mammalian cells that could explain genetic variability in cancer and other diseases. The studies appear in today’s online edition of Cell.

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Itching is one of the most prevalent side effects of powerful, pain-killing drugs like morphine, oxycodone and other opioids. Now in mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown they can control opioid-induced itching without interfering with a drug’s ability to relieve pain.

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A newly developed method for microscopically extracting, or "mining," information from genomes could represent a significant boost in the search for new therapeutic drugs and improve science's understanding of basic functions such as how cells communicate with one another.

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Researchers with UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed and used a high-throughput molecular screening approach that identifies and characterizes chemical compounds that can target the stem cells that are responsible for creating deadly brain tumors.

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists investigate a gene that appears to protect against rheumatoid arthritis. The research could inform future treatment approaches.

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It's "Waterworld" snail style: Ocean-dwelling snails that spend most of their lives floating upside down, attached to rafts of mucus bubbles.

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Thomas Jefferson University researchers uncover how two nuclear receptors—EcR/Usp and E75A—work against each other during Drosophila metamorphosis.

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The bacterium that causes tuberculosis has a unique molecule on its outer cell surface that blocks a key part of the body’s defense. New research suggests this represents a novel mechanism in the microbe’s evolving efforts to remain hidden from the human immune system.

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Cells making slippery mucus provide a sticking point for disease-causing bacteria in the gut, according to a study published on October 3 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

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Most of the time, the immune system is the body’s protector. But in autoimmune diseases, the immune system does an about face, turning on the body and attacking normal cells. A major discovery by La Jolla Institute scientist Amnon Altman, Ph.D., and his colleagues, of a previously unknown molecular interaction that is essential for T lymphocyte activation, could have major implications for stopping this aberrant immune system behavior and the accompanying undesirable immune responses that cause autoimmune diseases and allergies.

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A protein that regulates differentiation in normal tissue may play a very different role in colon and breast cancer, activating proliferation of damaged cells, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine in a study published in Gastroenterology.

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Breast cancer cells that mutate to resist drug treatment survive by establishing tiny pumps on their surface that reject the drugs as they penetrate the cell membrane - making the cancer insensitive to chemotherapy drugs.

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Scientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine found a way to rapidly produce pure populations of cells that grow into the protective myelin coating on nerves in mice. Their process opens a door to research and potential treatments for multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and other demyelinating diseases afflicting millions of people worldwide.

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Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School have found that a common cancer protein leads a second, totally different life in normal adult brain cells: It helps regulates memory formation and may be implicated in Alzheimer's disease.

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Identifying the cellular origins of breast cancer might lead to earlier diagnosis and more efficient management of the disease. New research published in PNAS Early Edition has determined that common forms of human breast cancers originate from breast cells known as luminal epithelial cells, while rare forms of breast cancer, such as metaplastic carcinomas, originate from basal epithelial cell types.

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Research suggests that faulty filtration allows detrimental enzymes to wreak havoc on body's fluid balance.

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-A strain of genetically enhanced bacteria developed by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies may pave the way for new synthetic drugs and new ways of manufacturing medicines and biofuels, according to a paper published September 18 in Nature Chemical Biology.

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Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have identified for the first time two molecular pathways that are critical to activating a type of “good” fat found in the body, called brown fat, which actually burns energy rather than storing it, which the more common white fat does. This discovery could play an important role in the fight against obesity and diabetes.

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Researchers have shown they can reverse the aging process for human adult stem cells, which are responsible for helping old or damaged tissues regenerate. The findings could lead to medical treatments that may repair a host of ailments that occur because of tissue damage as people age.

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have revealed the genetic underpinnings of cells – called Foxp3-expressing regulatory T cells or Tregs – that can prevent the immune response from turning cannibalistic.

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Research suggests high dietary salt intake and obesity work together to trigger an abnormal activation of a cellular protein called Rac1.

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Technique for observing how proteins work in human tissue from cystic fibrosis patients yields new insights into the cellular processes of disease.

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Cystic fibrosis is caused by a genetic defect. Although scientists do not fully understand how or why the defect occurs, researchers have found that a protein called ubiquitin ligase Nedd4 may hold a promising clue

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Scientists have identified a surprising new role for a new type of T cell in the immune system: some of them can be activated by nerves to make a neurotransmitter (acetylcholine) that blocks inflammation. The discovery of these T cells is novel and suggests that it may be possible to treat inflammation and autoimmune diseases by targeting the nerves and the T cells.

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Making use of a new “super resolution” microscope that provides sharp images at extremely small scales, scientists have achieved unprecedented views of the immune system in action.

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Gene therapy delivered directly to a particularly stubborn type of breast cancer cell causes the cells to self-destruct, lowers chance of recurrence and helps increase the effectiveness of some types of chemotherapy, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported in the Sept. 13 edition of Cancer Cell.

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A research team led by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has discovered proteins in the blood that are associated with early lung cancer development in mice and humans. The advance brings the reality of a blood test for the early detection and diagnosis of lung cancer a step closer.

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Toxin proteins are genetically engineered into our food because they kill insects by perforating body cell walls, and Professor Rikard Blunck of the University of Montreal’s Group for the study of membrane proteins (GÉPROM) has detected the molecular mechanism involved.

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In a study published today (Sunday, Sept. 11), researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison report the first full measurement of the proteins made by both types of stem cells. In a study that looked at four embryonic stem cells and four IPS cells, the proteins turned out to be 99 percent similar, says Joshua Coon, an associate professor of chemistry and biomolecular chemistry who directed the project.

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Dana-Farber researchers successfully disrupted the function of the gene MYC by tampering with the gene's "on" switch and growth signals in multiple myeloma cells, offering promising strategy for treating myeloma and other cancers driven by the MYC gene.

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A somewhat mysterious soft tissue found in the fetus during early development in the womb plays a pivotal role in the formation of mature beta cells the sole source of the body’s insulin. This discovery, made by scientists at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Texas A&M University, may lead to new ways of addressing Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.