All living organisms are made up of cells, behind these intricate life forms lie complex cellular processes that allow our bodies to function. Researchers working on protein secretion -- a fundamental process in biology -- have revealed how protein channels in the membrane are activated by special signals contained in proteins destined for secretion. The results help explain the underlying mechanism responsible for the release of proteins such as hormones and antibodies into the blood stream....
The many factors that contribute to how cells communicate and function at the most basic level are still not fully understood, but researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have uncovered a mechanism that helps explain how intracellular membranes fuse, and in the process, created a new physiological membrane fusion model. The findings appear in the current edition of the journal PLoS Biology. "Within our cells, we have communicating compartments called vesicles (a bubble-like membrane structure...
Organic chemists at the University of York have made a significant advance towards establishing the origin of the carbohydrates (sugars) that form the building blocks of life. A team led by Dr Paul Clarke in the Department of Chemistry at York has re-created a process which could have occurred in the prebiotic world. Working with colleagues at the University of Nottingham, they have made the first step towards showing how simple sugars -- threose and erythrose -- developed. The research is...
A new class of nanoparticles, synthesized by a UC Davis research team to prevent premature drug release, holds promise for greater accuracy and effectiveness in delivering cancer drugs to tumors. The work is published in the current issue of Angewandte Chemie, a leading international chemistry journal. In their paper, featured on the inside back cover of the journal, Kit Lam, professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, and his team report on the synthesis of a...
A Jackson Laboratory research team led by Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Susan Ackerman, Ph.D., has discovered a defect in the RNA splicing process in neurons that may contribute to neurological disease. The researchers found that a mutation in just one of the many copies of a gene known as U2 snRNAs, which is involved in the intricate processing of protein-encoding RNAs, causes neurodegeneration. Many so-called non-coding RNAs—those that don't directly encode proteins—are...
An international team of microbiologists led by Indiana University researchers has identified a new bacterial growth process -- one that occurs at a single end or pole of the cell instead of uniform, dispersed growth along the long axis of the cell -- that could have implications in the development of new antibacterial strategies. Outer membrane proteins of an Agrobacterium tumefaciens cell were labeled in red, with images taken every 50 minutes as the cell grew. In panels three and four it is...
New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Cell & Bioscience is the first to show that left-handed Z-DNA, normally only found at sites where DNA is being copied, can also form on nucleosomes. The structure of DNA which provides the blueprint for life has famously been described as a double helix. To save space inside the nucleus, DNA is tightly wound around proteins to form nucleosomes which are then further wound and compacted into chromatin, which is further compacted...
Men are four times more likely to develop liver cancer compared to women, a difference attributed to the sex hormones androgen and estrogen. Although this gender difference has been known for a long time, the molecular mechanisms by which estrogens prevent -- and androgens promote -- liver cancer remain unclear. Now, new research, published in Cell this week from the lab of Klaus Kaestner, PhD, professor of Genetics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has found...
Cholesterol-lowering statins seem to keep breast cancer at bay in some patients. Now researchers reporting in the January 20th issue of the journalCell, a Cell Press publication, provide clues about how statins might yield those unexpected benefits. The findings also suggest that mutations in a single gene could be used to identify tumors likely to respond to statin therapy. The data raises the possibility that we might identify subsets of patients whose tumors may respond to statins," said...
A novel technique has been developed and demonstrated at Penn State University to map the proteins that read and regulate chromosomes -- the string-like structures inside cells that carry genes. The specific order in which these proteins attach DNA-containing nucleosomes along the chromosome determines whether a brain cell, a liver cell, or a cancer cell is formed. Until now, it has been exceedingly difficult to determine exactly where such proteins bind to the chromosome, and therefore how...

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