cell-biology
12 stories tagged "cell-biology"
The Mediterranean Diet's Mitochondrial 'Boost' Comes From One Blood Draw in 49 Heart Patients
Older heart-rhythm patients who ate closest to the Mediterranean pattern carried more humanin and SHMOOSE, but nobody's diet was changed and both gaps landed at p = 0.046.
Brain & AgingPull One Protein Out of a Human Cancer Cell and Its Jumping Genes Wake Up Within Two Hours
Removing either of two CCR4-NOT proteins from a human colorectal cancer cell line raised transcription at about 77 percent of tracked LINE jumping genes within two hours, yet the two removals pushed jumping-gene RNA lifespans in opposite directions.
CancerA Scientist Chased One Missing Blood Marker for Twenty Years. The Answer Was a Tiny Gene Hiding in Plain Sight.
More than 99.9 percent of people carry a blood marker called AnWj. For most of the few who don't, the absence is acquired, a sign of an underlying blood disorder or cancer rather than something they were born with.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe 47th Human Blood Group Was Hiding in a Protein Almost Too Small to Find
More than 99.9% of us carry the AnWj antigen without knowing. For the rare few born without it, a routine transfusion can turn dangerous, and until now no genetic test could reliably identify them before the damage was done.
Brain & AgingFreeze a Brain Cell Fast Enough and Its Bare Wires Turn Out to Be Strings of Pearls, Not Smooth Tubes
The bumps along the brain's thinnest fibers were written off as damage for a century. Johns Hopkins froze the tissue fast enough to catch them intact, and to watch them swell when the neuron fires hard.
Autoimmune & InflammationOne Protein Keeps Your Immune System's Peacekeeper Cells From Switching Sides
Regulatory T cells are supposed to be the immune system's off switch. Strip out a protein called TIF1γ and, under inflammation, they lose that identity, start producing an inflammatory cytokine, and join the attack.
Metabolic & WeightA Brown-Fat Gene Turns Out to Be the Dial Between a Heart Cell Dividing and Growing Up
Turn PRDM16 down and lab-grown heart cells start dividing again but stay weak. Turn it up and they mature but quit the cell cycle. It's the same gene that decides whether a cell becomes calorie-burning brown fat.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Body's Own Brake on Inflammation: Mapped in 2015, Still Not in a Pill
A kinase called MST4 rides the brake on TRAF6, the protein that lets inflammation spiral, doing gently from inside the cell what broad autoimmune drugs force from the outside. Researchers mapped it in 2015. No pill uses it yet.
Infectious DiseaseScientists Watched the Flu Dissolve Structures Inside the Nucleus, in Every Cell and Every Strain They Tried
Influenza reaches into the nucleus and takes apart droplets that may be part of the cell's own defense. Scientists have now mapped how. The drug targets that map supposedly unlocks are still hypothetical.
CancerWhether a T Cell Keeps Killing Cancer or Quits Is Written in How Its Genome Folds
Exhausted CD8 T cells are why checkpoint drugs and CAR-T so often stall. New maps of the 3D genome show their fate is set by how the DNA is physically folded, and by CTCF, the protein that does the folding.
Brain & AgingSenescence Built Your Hands Before It Ever Aged Your Skin
Cellular senescence, the process blamed for aging and disease, is also how an embryo sculpts fingers and clears its own tissue. That double life scrambles the anti-aging industry's tidy 'kill the zombie cells' pitch.
Brain & AgingYour Brain Has 170 Billion Cells and No Blueprint. Here's How One Cell Pulls It Off.
For fifty years the textbook said chemical gradients tell brain cells where to go. A new model says cells inherit their address from their family tree instead.