Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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Evolution is change, and not always for the better. Evolution, in fact, is at the core of many of the diseases that are hardest to treat. Pathogens such as bacteria and parasites evade their host’s defenses or antimicrobial drugs through evolution. Cancer itself in an evolutionary process, whereby “rogue” cells evolve to grow beyond their normal barriers, migrate to distant locations in the body, and ultimately evade chemotherapy.

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UNC researchers found that the blood platelet protein Rasa3 is critical to the success of the common anti-platelet drug Plavix, which breaks up blood clots during heart attacks and other arterial diseases. The discovery could prove important for creating drugs to alter platelet function.

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Scientists identified a possible way to keep the parasite that transmits sleeping sickness from reproducing, reducing the health dangers to its human hosts.

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Researchers find many new gene-regulating molecules that are tissue and human specific.

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Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that the inflammatory molecule LTB4 promotes insulin resistance, a first step in developing type 2 diabetes. What’s more, the team found that genetically removing the cell receptor that responds to LTB4, or blocking it with a drug, improves insulin sensitivity in obese mice. The study is published Feb. 23 by Nature Medicine.

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Like a surgeon separating conjoined twins, cells have to be careful to get everything just right when they divide in two. Otherwise, the resulting daughter cells could be hobbled, particularly if they end up with too many or two few chromosomes. Successful cell division hangs on the formation of a dip called a cleavage furrow, a process that has remained mysterious. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that no single molecular architect directs the cleavage furrow’s formation; rather, it is a robust structure made of a suite of team players.

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Tumors require blood to emerge and spread. That is why scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center believe that targeting blood vessel cells known as pericytes may offer a potential new therapeutic approach when combined with vascular growth factors responsible for cell death.

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Much like mapping the human genome laid the foundations for understanding the genetic basis of human health, new maps of the human epigenome may further unravel the complex links between DNA and disease. The epigenome is part of the machinery that helps direct how genes are turned off and on in different types of cells.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have identified a new biomarker that could help identify patients who are more likely to respond to certain chemotherapies.

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Researchers have discovered a novel role for Mitofusin 2, and the findings may point to a new treatment for patients with diseases caused by loss of the mitochondrial protein.

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Just as human relationships are a two-way street, fusion between cells requires two active partners: one to send protrusions into its neighbor, and one to hold its ground and help complete the process. Researchers have now found that one way the receiving cell plays its role is by having a key structural protein come running in response to pressure on the cell membrane, rather than waiting for chemical signals to tell it that it’s needed. The study, which helps open the curtain on a process relevant to muscle formation and regeneration, fertilization, and immune response, appears in the March 9 issue of the journal Developmental Cell.

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When fighting chronic viral infections or cancers, a key division of the immune system, known as CD8 T cells, sometimes loses its ability to effectively fight foreign invaders. Overcoming so-called T cell exhaustion is crucial to treating persistent infections but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood.

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Researchers at the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine have discovered a molecular ‘switch’ that controls replication and transcription of mitochondria DNA, a key finding that could influence the development of targeted therapies for cancer, developmental processes related to fertility and aging.

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Using theoretical and experimental approaches, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have developed a two-pronged strategy that uses an evolving cell population’s adaptive nature against it.

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A study by scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute sheds significant new light on a surprising and critical role that microbes may play in nutritional disorders such as protein malnutrition.

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To better understand these cellular changes and how they influence the progression and severity of glaucoma, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute turned to a mouse model of the disease. Their study, published Feb. 10 in The Journal of Neuroscience, reveals how some types of retinal ganglion cells alter their structures within seven days of elevated eye pressure, while others do not.

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A team of Stony Brook University researchers have identified fatty acid binding proteins (FABPs) as intracellular transporters for two ingredients in marijuana, THC and CBD (cannabidiol). The finding, published early online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, is significant because it helps explain how CBD works within the cells. Recent clinical findings have shown that CBD may help reduce seizures and could be a potential new medicine to treat pediatric treatment-resistant epilepsy.

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Researchers working at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have captured the first X-ray portraits of living bacteria. This milestone, reported in the Feb. 11 issue of Nature Communications, is a first step toward possible X-ray explorations of the molecular machinery at work in viral infections, cell division, photosynthesis and other processes that are important to biology, human health and our environment.

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UNC scientists have created a new research tool, based on the fruit fly, to help crack the histone code. This research tool can be used to better understand the function of histone proteins, which play critical roles in the regulation of gene expression in animals and plants.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have identified a new cellular pathway affected in cystinosis, a rare genetic disorder that can result in eye and kidney damage. The findings could eventually lead to new drug treatments for reducing or preventing the onset of renal failure in patients.

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Knowing how cells exert force and sense mechanical feedback in their microenvironment is crucial to understanding how they activate a wide range of cellular functions, such as cell reproduction, differentiation and adhesion. Now a more fine-grained picture of adhesion mechanics is emerging, thanks to a new tool developed in Illinois in recent years called a "tension gauge tether," which allows scientists to measure cell mechanics at the single-molecule level.

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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine report in Nature Communications that an enzyme called MnSOD causes cells, as they become cancerous, to switch from aerobic metabolism — using oxygen to break down sugars for energy — to a type of fermentation called glycolysis, which does not require oxygen.

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Gabrilovich and fellow investigators demonstrated what is happening at a cellular level that allows for chronic inflammation to cause a variety of cancers.

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Not unlike an urban restaurant, the success of a bacterial cell depends on three things: localization, localization and localization. But the complete set of controls by which bacteria control the movement of proteins and other essential biological materials globally within the confines of their membrane walls has been something of a mystery. Now, researchers have parsed out the localization mechanisms that E. coli use to sort through and organize their subcellular components.

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Researchers identify signaling molecules in intestinal stem cells that can lead to tumors if left unregulated. The findings suggest a new approach to targeting intestinal cancers.

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A compound found in common foods such as red grapes and peanuts may help prevent age-related decline in memory, according to new research published by a faculty member in the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.

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Head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) ranks among the top ten most prevalent cancers in the United States. Despite its prevalence, little is known about how this cancer develops and spreads. However, in a paper published in the January 29, 2015 edition of Nature, researchers offer critical new information about head and neck cancers.

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Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have uncovered the workings of cell-protection device, one that may play a major role in a number of age-related diseases, including diabetes and Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases.

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Daniel Chitwood, Ph.D., assistant member, used the world’s largest single-celled organism, an aquatic alga called Caulerpa taxifolia, to study the nature of structure and form in plants. It was recently reported the results of their work in the online journal, PLOS Genetics.

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Researchers working in part at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered that a key protein for cell health, which has recently been linked to diabetes, cancer and other diseases, can multitask by having two identical protein parts divide labor.

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Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah have found that defects in how cells are squeezed out of overcrowded tissue to die, a process called extrusion, may be a mechanism by which pancreatic cancer begins. From these findings, they may have identified an effective way to reverse the defective extrusion’s effects without destroying normal tissues nearby. The results were published in the latest edition of the journal eLife.

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In a pair of related studies, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have shown their drug candidates can target biological pathways involved in the destruction of brain cells in Parkinson's disease.

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Researchers at the University of Kentucky have unlocked the metabolic function of the essential enzyme laforin, which opens new pathways to treating the deadly Lafora's Disease.

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A team of biologists has identified new details in a cellular mechanism that serves as a defense against stress. The findings potentially offer insights into tumor progression and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s — the cell’s inability to respond to stress is a major cause of these diseases.

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Researchers have identified a population of “progenitor” cells in the skin that are solely responsible for the generation and maintenance of touch-sensing Merkel cells.

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Workhorse molecules called heat-shock proteins contribute to refolding proteins that were once misfolded and clumped, causing such disorders as Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have been developing ways to "reprogram" one such protein – a yeast protein called Hsp104 -- to improve its therapeutic properties.

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E. coli usually brings to mind food poisoning and beach closures, but researchers recently discovered a protein in E. coli that inhibits the accumulation of potentially toxic amyloids—a hallmark of diseases such as Parkinson's.

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Upending decades-old dogma, a team of scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say enzymes long categorized as promoting cancer are, in fact, tumor suppressors and that current clinical efforts to develop inhibitor-based drugs should instead focus on restoring the enzymes’ activities.

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Existing cancer therapies are geared toward massacring tumor cells, but Johns Hopkins researchers propose a different strategy: subtly hardening cancer cells to prevent them from invading new areas of the body. They devised a way of screening compounds for the desired effect and have identified a compound that shows promise in fighting pancreatic cancer.

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A group of white blood cells known as B cells, which play a key role in the human immune response, need a protein-targeting signal called M6P in order to proliferate, differentiate, and present immune cell–activating antigens.

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Scientists at the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered the molecular mechanisms responsible for the formation of the adherens junction at the nanoscale level. This research is published in Developmental Cell (Wu et al., Actin-delimited adhesion-independent clustering of E-cadherin forms the nanoscale building blocks of adherens junctions, Developmental Cell, 16 Jan 2015, doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2014.12.003).

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Organization is key to an efficient workplace, and cells are no exception to this rule. New evidence from Johns Hopkins researchers suggests that, in addition to membranes, cells have another way to keep their contents and activities separate: with ribbons of spinning proteins.

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A stem cell capable of regenerating both bone and cartilage has been identified in bone marrow of mice.

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In a new study researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have uncovered how melanoma becomes resistant to a promising new drug combo therapy utilizing BRAF+MEK inhibitors in patients after an initial period of tumor shrinkage.

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Case Western Reserve and University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center researchers and physicians have discovered that the molecule known as coenzyme A plays a key role in cell metabolism by regulating the actions of nitric oxide. Their findings appeared in the Dec. 15 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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Antibiotics aren’t supposed to be effective against viruses. But new evidence in mice suggests antibiotics may help fight norovirus, a highly contagious gastrointestinal virus, report scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

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A Roman philosopher was the first to note the relationship between a sound mind and a sound body. Now the findings of a new Johns Hopkins study reveal a possible biochemical explanation behind this ancient observation.

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A team led by structural biologists at The Scripps Research Institute has taken a big step toward understanding the intricate molecular mechanism of a metabolic enzyme— nicotinamide nucleotide transhydrogenase—produced in most forms of life on Earth.

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In the race to find a safe and effective weight loss drug, much attention has focused on the chemical processes that store and use energy. But a new mouse study from Johns Hopkins suggests that tweaking these processes, even in a targeted way that affects only fat cells, may not yield a silver-bullet obesity cure.