Latest Biological membrane Stories
A new way of looking at a cell's surface reveals the distribution of small molecules in the cell membrane, changing the understanding of its organization. A novel imaging study by researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of Illinois and the National Institutes of Health revealed some unexpected relationships among molecules within cell membranes. Their findings provide a new way of studying cell structure and ultimately its function. Led by Mary Kraft...
The work has implications for cancer drug development Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have determined how two proteins help create organelles, or specialized subunits within a cell, that play a vital role in maintaining cell health. This discovery opens the door for research on substances that could interfere with the formation of these organelles and lead to new therapies for cancer. The study, published online ahead of print on December 2, 2012, by the journal...
Boosting the activity of a vitamin-sensitive cell adhesion pathway has the potential to counteract the muscle degeneration and reduced mobility caused by muscular dystrophies, according to a research team led by scientists at the University of Maine. The discovery, published 23 October in the open access journal PLOS Biology, is particularly important for congenital muscular dystrophies, which are progressive, debilitating and often lethal diseases that currently remain without cure. The...
Researchers explain 'hydration repulsion' between biomembranes Biomembranes enclose biological cells like a skin. They also surround organelles that carry out important functions in metabolism and cell division. Scientists have long known in principle how biomembranes are built up, and also that water molecules play a role in maintaining the optimal distance between neighboring membranes—otherwise they could not fulfill their vital functions. Now, with the help of computer simulations,...
Two Michigan State University researchers have invented a protein purifier that could help pharmaceutical companies save time and money. The details of the invention, which appear in a recent issue of the journal Langmuir, demonstrate that MSU chemists Merlin Bruening and Greg Baker’s high-performance membranes are highly suitable for protein purification, a crucial step in the development of some new drugs. Purifying proteins, the process of isolating a single, desired protein from...
Why does inhaling anesthetics cause unconsciousness? New insights into this century-and-a-half-old question may spring from research performed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Scientists from NIST and the National Institutes of Health have found hints that anesthesia may affect the organization of fat molecules, or lipids, in a cell's outer membrane—potentially altering the ability to send signals along nerve cell membranes. "A better fundamental...
Lipids help control the development of cell polarity 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. Over the last few years, Rong Li, Ph.D., and her team at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have figured out many important details of...
Chemists have taken an important step in making artificial life forms from scratch. Using a novel chemical reaction, they have created self-assembling cell membranes, the structural envelopes that contain and support the reactions required for life. Neal Devaraj, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and Itay Budin, a graduate student at Harvard University, report their success in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. “One of our long...
Opening up a new door in synthetic biology, a team of researchers has developed a microfluidic device that produces a continuous supply of tiny lipid spheres that are similar in many ways to a cell's outer membrane. "Cells are essentially small, complex bioreactors enclosed by phospholipid membranes," said Abraham Lee from the University of California, Irvine. "Effectively producing vesicles with lipid membranes that mimic those of natural cells is a valuable tool for fundamental biology...
Neurofibrillary tangles – odd, twisted clumps of protein found within nerve cells – are a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. The tangles, which were first identified in the early 1900s by German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Aloysius Alzheimer, are formed when changes in a protein called tau cause it to aggregate in an insoluble mass in the cytoplasm of cells. Normally, the tau protein is involved in the formation of microtubules, hollow filaments that provide cells with...
