Feature Channels: Cell Biology

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A simple experiment, originally undertaken to test a new methodology, unexpectedly disproved the prevailing notion of cancer metabolism.

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In the popular nursery story The Three Little Pigs, the prudent porker who builds his house of brick is chided by his pals, who choose much easier ways to construct their respective abodes. Only later in the cautionary tale does the reader discover the benefits of extra cost and effort in erecting shelter.

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For the first time, scientists know what happens to a virus’ shape when it invades a host cell, thanks to an experiment by researchers at Penn State College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Understanding how the virus shape specifically changes could lead to more effective anti-viral therapies.

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In a first-of-its-kind look at human kidney development, researchers at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have isolated human nephron progenitor (NP) cells. Their results may offer a future way to foster renal regeneration after chronic kidney failure or acute injury.

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Tumors also differ among patients with the same type of cancer, so how is a physician able to prescribe a tailored regimen for the patient? Researchers developed Canopy, an approach to infer the evolutionary track of tumor cells by surveying two types of mutations – somatic copy number alterations and single-nucleotide alterations – derived from multiple samples taken from a single patient.

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A research team led by Charles S. Cox, Jr., M.D., at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth has been awarded $6.8 million from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to assess the safety and efficacy of using autologous stem cell therapy in adults with emergent traumatic brain injury.

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A research team led by a Northwestern University scientist has discovered that male animals, through their invisible chemical “essence,” prime female animals for reproduction but with the unfortunate side effect of also hastening females’ aging process. The females sense the two signals and respond by altering their physiology. These findings in roundworms, which echo those made in mammalian studies, could lead to therapies that delay puberty and prolong fertility in humans as well as combat aging.

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Scientists have implicated a type of stem cell in the calcification of blood vessels that is common in patients with chronic kidney disease. The research will guide future studies into ways to block minerals from building up inside blood vessels and exacerbating atherosclerosis, the hardening of the arteries.

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This year, the U.S. reported for the first time that a patient had been infected by bacteria resistant to colistin, an antibiotic of last resort. The announcement followed several years of warnings that current antibiotics aren't diverse enough to fight pathogens as drug resistance spreads. The cover story of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, sums up how researchers are trying to stay ahead of the bugs.

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As health departments around the U.S. boost efforts to combat Zika, scientists are working on new ways to kill the mosquitoes that carry the virus. One approach involves understanding the molecular mechanisms that keep the bugs alive so we can then undermine them. Scientists report in the ACS journal Biochemistry that they have revealed new structural insights on a key protein from Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species most often linked to the spread of Zika.

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Umbilical cord blood transplants may have advantages beyond offering an alternative stem cell source for leukemia patients without a traditional donor match, according to a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine.

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In a paper published today in Science Translational Medicine, researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center shared data from an early-phase study of patients with advanced non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) who received JCAR014, a Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell treatment, and chemotherapy. CAR T cells are made from a patient’s own immune cells that are then genetically engineered to better identify and kill cancer cells.

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They are the tiny motors present in many of the human body’s most complex systems. Cilia are hair-like structures that oscillate in waves, and are present in the brain, kidneys, lungs and reproductive system. They move liquids such as cerebrospinal fluid and mucus past the cell surface, and throughout the body. Flagella are whip-like structures that steer cells along.

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More than 20 years ago, a billboard in China piqued the interest of a chemical biologist. It endorsed an extract from the plant known as the “thunder god vine” as an immunosuppressant. A brief review of published research revealed that the extract’s key ingredient — the small molecule triptolide — had been identified 20 years before that billboard ad, and it could stop cells from multiplying.

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After receiving a stem cell injection into his spine, Kris Boesen, who was paralyzed from his neck to his toes after a car accident, is regaining movement in his extremities and hope for increased independence.

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With support from NASA, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are exploring whether RNA could have formed on early Earth deep beneath the ocean's surface or deep underground.

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Columbia University will award the 2016 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Howard Cedar, PhD, and Aharon Razin, PhD, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Gary Felsenfeld, PhD, of the National Institutes of Health.

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New research may help those with advanced mastocytosis and possibly many more people. Mastocytosis is a rare disease of the immune system in which the body produces too many abnormal mast cells. Mast cells control allergic and inflammatory responses. Research on a new drug shows that it may prolong life significantly and improve quality of life.

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Using an experimental co-culture approach in which two different types of neurons from a mouse model of Huntington’s disease (HD) are grown side-by-side, connecting to form critically impacted circuits, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have identified a subunit of a protein that, when expressed, reverse the mutated gene effects responsible for HD.

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Hard labor might be the very thing we try to avoid on Labor Day. But our cells and their components don’t have the luxury of taking a day off. We at NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences give a shout out to some of these tireless cellular workers.

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Scientists have revealed molecular differences between how the African and Asian strains of Zika virus infect neural progenitor cells.

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A paper published in ACS Nano, one of the top nanotechnology journals in the world, explores this topic. “Modeling and Analysis of Intercalant Effects on Circular DNA Conformation” focuses on the effect of the intercalating agent ethidium bromide (a mimic for many chemotherapy drugs) on the tertiary structure of DNA.

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Using a new, lightning-fast camera paired with an electron microscope, University of Maryland School of Medicine scientists have captured images of one of the smallest human proteins to be “seen” with a microscope.

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University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers, by tracking a molecular marker that has been shown to increase in white blood cells as people age, have uncovered clues that suggest that stem cell transplant is linked to a marked increase in the “molecular age” of these immune cells in a group of patients with blood cancer.

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Research uncovers true properties of rare radioactive metal that could provide key to targeted cancer drugs.

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The National Institutes of Health will fund six projects to identify biological factors that affect neural regeneration in the retina. The projects are part of the National Eye Institute (NEI) Audacious Goals Initiative (AGI), a targeted effort to restore vision by regenerating neurons and their connections in the eye and visual system. These projects will receive a total of $12.4 million over three years, pending availability of funds.

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Scientists discovered that the major developmental function of heterochromatin – a form of tight DNA packaging found in chromosomes – is likely the suppression of virus-like DNA elements known as transposons, which can copy and paste themselves throughout the genome, potentially causing diseases.

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Scientists invent a multi-view microscope that doubles the resolution of images without exposing them to an increased amount of light or prolonging the imaging process.

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The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded the University of Minnesota an $8.2 million Physical Sciences in Oncology Center (PS-OC) grant over the next five years to develop a cell migration simulator that will predict how cancer cells spread in the body leading to invasion and metastasis.

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Roger Tsien, PhD, co-winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry and professor of pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry at University of California San Diego School of Medicine for 27 years, died August 24 in Eugene, Ore. He was 64.

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The National Institutes of Health have awarded Dr. Evgeny Pavlov, assistant professor of basic science and craniofacial biology at the New York University College of Dentistry , a $1.8M, five-year grant to study the phenomenon known as the “Mitochondrial Permeability Transition” to prevent strokes and heart attacks.

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Developing blood cells are caught in tugs of war between competing gene regulatory networks before finally deciding what type of cell to become, according to a study published Aug. 31 in Nature. Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center report that as developing blood cells are triggered by a multitude of genetic signals firing on and off, they are pulled back and forth in fluctuating multi-lineage states before finally becoming specific cell types.

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Insoo Hyun has proposed a framework for addressing ethical questions surrounding potentially revolutionary research on part-human, part-animal embryos, which can be produced when human stem cells are transplanted into animal embryos.

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A clinical trial using stem cells to treat people with recent spinal cord injuries has cleared two key safety hurdles, and been given approval to expand the therapy to a larger group of patients with a much higher dose of cells.

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Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and the University of Michigan will embark on a $15.4 million effort to develop new systems for quickly screening libraries of drugs for potential effectiveness against schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has announced.

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Berkeley Lab researchers linked the overexpression of 14 genes related to cell division to cancer patients' prognosis and response to specific treatments. The findings could be used to develop a biomarker that doctors and patients use to make better informed decisions in clinical settings.

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Australia is known as a country full of deadly creatures - now people have trapdoor spiders hiding in their backyards.

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Having built their nest over the vertical ventilation pipe of an old nuclear weapon bunker in Poland, every year a large number of wood ants fall down the pipe to never return back to their colony.

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A new study led by the University of Minnesota shows that monkeys in captivity lose much of their native gut bacteria diversity and their gut bacteria ends up resembling those of humans. The results suggest that switching to a low-fiber, Western diet may have the power to deplete most normal primate gut microbes in favor of a less diverse set of bacteria.

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A new study reveals a counterintuitive cellular strategy that may protect insulin-producing cells from destruction during type 1 diabetes.

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A research team at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has generated functional human and mouse tissue-engineered liver from adult stem and progenitor cells. Tissue-engineered Liver (TELi) was found to contain normal structural components such as hepatocytes, bile ducts and blood vessels.

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Researchers have discovered an enzyme that plays a leading role in the formation of compounds that give aged wines their sought-after aroma.

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Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a mysterious and maddening condition, with no cure or known cause. But researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, using a variety of techniques to identify and assess targeted metabolites in blood plasma, have identified a characteristic chemical signature for the debilitating ailment and an unexpected underlying biology: It is similar to the state of dauer, and other hypometabolic syndromes like caloric restriction, diapause and hibernation.

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Scientists report that a specialized drug screen test using lab-grown human cells has revealed two classes of compounds already in the pharmaceutical arsenal that may work against mosquito-borne Zika virus infections.

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Breast cancer researchers have discovered that mutations found outside of genes that accumulate in estrogen receptor positive breast tumours throughout their development act as dominant culprits driving the disease.

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WORCESTER, MA - A study in The Journal of Cell Biology by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School reveals important new details about the inner workings of the CRISPR-Cas9 machinery in live cells that may have implications for the development of therapeutics that use the powerful gene editing tool.

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Starting out as a college freshman can be hard.

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New Orleans, LA - Dr. John England, Professor and Chair of Neurology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, and colleagues in Honduras and Venezuela have reported a new neurological complication of infection with the Zika virus. They described the first confirmed case of Zika-associated sensory polyneuropathy in a paper published online by the Journal of the Neurological Sciences, available at http://www.jns-journal.com/article/S0022-510X(16)30535-4/abstract.

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A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will help researchers understand the ways that marine animal larvae use sound as a cue to settle on coral reefs. The study, published on August 23rd in the online journal Scientific Reports, has determined that sounds created by adult fish and invertebrates may not travel far enough for larvae --which hatch in open ocean--to hear them, meaning that the larvae might rely on other means to home in on a reef system.

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The USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture supports NoroCORE, a multidisciplinary research collaborative of 30 researchers from 25 universities who are joining forces to understand and control food borne virus risks.