The Yin and Yang of Stem Cell Quiescence and Proliferation
Stowers Institute for Medical ResearchNon-canonical Wnt-signaling maintains a quiescent pool of blood-forming stem cells in mouse bone marrow.
Non-canonical Wnt-signaling maintains a quiescent pool of blood-forming stem cells in mouse bone marrow.
Stowers team reconciles puzzling findings relating to centromere structure.
“Paper of the week” shows that a master regulator protein brings plethora of coactivators to gene expression sites.
An actin-ratchet tightens the contractile ring that severs budding daughter cells from their yeast mothers.
A team of Stowers scientists defines biochemical crosstalk between DNA interacting proteins and their modifications.
Stowers scientists use fruit flies to reveal unknown function of a transcriptional regulator of development and cancer
Cells on the move reach forward with lamellipodia and filopodia, cytoplasmic sheets and rods supported by branched networks or tight bundles of actin filaments. Cells without functional lamellipodia are still highly motile but lose their ability to stay on track, report researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in the April 9, 2012, online issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.
Few molecules are more interesting than DNA—except of course RNA. After two decades of research, that “other macromolecule” is no longer considered a mere messenger between glamorous DNA and protein-synthesizing machines. We now know that RNA has been leading a secret life, regulating gene expression and partnering with proteins to form catalytic ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes.
Just like a road atlas faithfully maps real-word locations, our brain maps many aspects of our physical world: Sensory inputs from our fingers are mapped next to each other in the somatosensory cortex; the auditory system is organized by sound frequency. The olfactory system was believed to map similarly, where groups of chemically related odorants - amines, ketones, or esters, for example - register with clusters of cells that are laid out next to each other.
In a standard biology textbook, cells tend to look more or less the same from all sides. But in real life cells have fronts and backs, tops and bottoms, and they orient many of their structures according to this polarity explaining, for example, why yeast cells bud at one end and not the other.
Stress-induced genomic instability facilitates rapid cellular adaption in yeast.
Stowers researchers discovered that a prion-like protein plays a key role in storing long-term memories.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered that planarians, tiny flatworms fabled for their regenerative powers, completely lack centrosomes, cellular structures that organize the network of microtubules that pulls chromosomes apart during cell division.
Transcriptional elongation control takes on new dimensions as Stowers researchers find gene class-specific elongation factors.
The trifecta of biological proof is to take a discovery made in a simple model organism like baker’s yeast and track down its analogs or homologs in “higher” creatures right up the complexity scale to people, in this case, from yeast to fruit flies to humans. In a pair of related studies, scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have hit such a trifecta, closing a circle of inquiry that they opened over a decade ago.
The accumulation of damaged protein is a hallmark of aging that not even the humble baker’s yeast can escape. Yet, aged yeast cells spawn off youthful daughter cells without any of the telltale protein clumps. Now, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research may have found an explanation for the observed asymmetrical distribution of damaged proteins between mothers and their youthful daughters.
Each time a cell divides—and it takes millions of cell divisions to create a fully grown human body from a single fertilized cell—its chromosomes have to be accurately divvied up between both daughter cells. Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research used, ironically enough, the single-celled organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae—commonly known as baker’s yeast—to gain new insight into the process by which chromosomes are physically segregated during cell division.
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.
All stem cells—regardless of their source—share the remarkable capability to replenish themselves by undergoing self-renewal. Yet, so far, efforts to grow and expand scarce hematopoietic (or blood-forming) stem cells in culture for therapeutic applications have been met with limited success.
Most cells rely on structural tethers to position chromosomes in preparation for cell division. Not so oocytes. Instead, a powerful intracellular stream pushes chromosomes far-off the center in preparation for the highly asymmetric cell division that completes oocyte maturation upon fertilization of the egg, report researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.