Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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Despite the intense activity and high hopes that surround the use of stem cells to reverse heart disease, scientists still face multiple roadblocks before the treatment will be ready for clinical prime time. Researchers are now finding ways to maximize the healing potential of stem cells by helping them overcome the inhospitable conditions of a damaged heart – bringing the promise of stem cell therapy for heart disease one step closer to reality.

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Although critically important for shaping the immune response and maintaining self-tolerance, how regulatory T cells (Treg cells) hold on to their immune-suppressive powers had remained unclear. Now, for the first time, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology identified a molecular pathway that maintains the stability and function of Treg cells.

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Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: An anonymous donor for cancer research, solar storms and incidences of rheumatoid arthritis, vulnerabilities in genome’s ‘Dimmer Switches’, new treatments for Alzheimer's, How people make decisions for or against flu vaccinations.

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A team of researchers led by Yu-Hua Tseng, Ph.D., Investigator in the Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism at Joslin Diabetes Center and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has created cell lines of human brown and white fat precursor cells that will help investigators to pick apart the factors that drive the development and activity of each type of cell.

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They’re pesky and annoying when they get into your fruit, but Drosophila melanogaster, more affectionately known as the “fruit fly,” have led researchers at Florida Atlantic University to an unexpected discovery involving drowning and comas.

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While it is well-known that weight gain results from an imbalance between what we eat and our energy expenditure, not so obvious is the role the nervous system plays in controlling energy balance. Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have shed light on the question.

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Brain tumor stem cells can resist treatment and regrow tumors, but scientists have identified a vulnerability in these cells that could lead to a new approach in battling deadly brain tumors.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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