Latest Cellular processes Stories
[ Watch the Video ] 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. The research, to be published in the Nov. 8, 2011 issue of Current Biology, clarifies the role of key chromosomal regions called centromeres in the formation of a...
An international team of scientists, including biologists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, may have pinpointed for the first time the mechanism responsible for cell polyploidy, a state in which cells contain more than 2 paired sets of chromosomes. When it comes to human chromosomes and the genes they carry, our tissue cells prefer matched pairs. Bundled within the nucleus of our cells are 46 chromosomes, one set of 23 inherited from each of our parents. Thus, we are...
Understanding the endocycle has implications for agriculture and medicine An international team of researchers led by investigators in the U.S. and Germany has shed light on the inner workings of the endocycle, a common cell cycle that fuels growth in plants, animals and some human tissues and is responsible for generating up to half of the Earth's biomass. This discovery, led by a geneticist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and reported Oct. 30 in Nature, leads to a new...
Cell cultures form the basis of day-to-day research work in applications that range from the development of drugs and vaccines to the decoding of functions of individual genes. Up until now, cell cultures have been sown, tended, observed and transferred to vessels – all by hand. A new device automates these worksteps completely. The human genome has been decoded. Of all the puzzles it contains, though, many remain unsolved. We know that the genome provides the blueprint for various...
Findings suggest how cancer cells can become resistant to DNA damage-inducing treatments An international team of scientists led by UC Davis researchers has discovered that DNA repair in cancer cells is not a one-way street as previously believed. Their findings show instead that recombination, an important DNA repair process, has a self-correcting mechanism that allows DNA to make a virtual u-turn and start over. The study's findings, which appear in the Oct. 23 online issue of the...
All cells in our body have a system that can handle cellular waste and release building blocks for recycling. The underlying mechanism is called autophagy and literally means "self-eating". Many cancer cells have increased the activity of this system and the increased release of building blocks equip the cancer cells with a growth advantage and can render them resistant towards treatment. "We have discovered a small molecule that can block autophagy in different cancer cells and...
Ascent Scientific, together with Freie Universität Berlin, The University of Newcastle and Children's Medical Research Institute today announced that they have entered into an exclusive licence, supply and distribution agreement for the clathrin inhibitors Pitstop 1TM and Pitstop 2TM for research. These novel compounds are the first rationally designed inhibitors of clathrin, and represent important tools for investigating essential cellular processes such as endocytosis. The...
In children with genomic disorders, often a gamete – egg or sperm – has gone disastrously awry with either a duplication or deletion of genetic material that results in physical and neurological problems for the subsequent child. Previous studies have identified a procedure called nonallelic homologous recombination, which occurs during meiosis or sexual cell division, as the event that most commonly occurs and results in this mistake in DNA. Researchers from Baylor College of...
Dr. Katja Fälber and Professor Oliver Daumke, structural biologists at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, together with researchers from Freie Universität (FU) Berlin, have determined the molecular structure of dynamin, a ‘wire-puller’ that mediates nutrient uptake into the cell. Since pathogens such as HIV can also enter the body’s cells in this way, understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms can potentially open up new approaches for medical...
Although the body is constantly replacing cells and cell constituents, damage and imperfections accumulate over time. Cleanup efforts are saved for when it really matters. Researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, are able to show how the body rids itself of damage when it is time to reproduce and create new life. 'I have a daughter. She is made of my cells yet has much less cellular damage than my cells. Why didn't she inherit my cells including the damaged proteins? That's...
