Latest Organelles Stories

A team of researchers led by Peter Calvert (SUNY Upstate Medical University) has, for the first time, measured the diffusion coefficient of a protein in a primary cilium and in other major compartments of a highly polarized cell. The study appears in the March issue of the Journal of General Physiology.Transport of proteins to and from cilia is crucial for normal cell function and survival, and interruption of transport has been implicated in degenerative diseases and neoplastic diseases,...

Monash University biochemists have found a critical piece in the evolutionary puzzle that explains how life on Earth evolved millions of centuries ago.The team, from the School of Biomedical Sciences, has described the process by which bacteria developed into more complex cells and found this crucial step happened much earlier in the evolutionary timeline than previously thought.Team leader and ARC Federation Fellow Trevor Lithgow said the research explained how mitochondria -- the power...

Nuclear pore complexes are best known as the communication channels that regulate the passage of all molecules to and from a cell's nucleus. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, however, have shown that some of the pores' constituent proteins, called nucleoporins, pull double duty as transcription factors regulating the activity of genes active during early development.This is the first time nucleoporins' gene regulatory function has been demonstrated in multicellular...

Contrary to prevailing wisdom, a new study from plant biologists at UC Davis shows that proteins of the Hsp70 family do indeed chaperone proteins across the membranes of chloroplasts, just as they do for other cellular structures.The findings are published online in the January issue of the journal The Plant Cell.One of the most crucial tasks in a living cell is to move things across membranes, both in and out of the cell and between different compartments inside.Chloroplasts are structures...

Scientists have identified a gene family that plays a key role in one of the earliest stages of development in which an embryo distinguishes its left side from the right and determines how organs should be positioned within the body. The finding in mice likely will lead to a better understanding of how certain birth defects occur in humans.The study is published in the January 24, 2010, advance online issue of the journal "Nature Cell Biology.""Having clear knowledge of embryonic development...

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, in Germany, led by the Spanish physicist Rubén Fernández-Busnadiego, has managed to obtain 3D images of the vesicles and filaments involved in communication between neurons. The method is based on a novel technique in electron microscopy, which cools cells so quickly that their biological structures can be frozen while fully active."We used electron cryotomography, a new technique in microscopy based on ultra-fast...

EMBL discovery could yield evolutionary insights and new model organismAlthough they are present almost everywhere, on land and sea, a group of related bacteria in the superphylum Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydiae, or PVC, have remained in relative obscurity ever since they were first described about a decade ago. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have discovered that these poorly-studied bacteria possess proteins thought to exist...

When ribosomes produce protein in all living cells, they do so through a chemical reaction that happens so fast that scientists have been puzzled. Using large quantum mechanical calculations of the reaction center of the ribosome, researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden can now provide the first detailed picture of the reaction. The findings are published in the Web edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS.It was previously known how the chemical reaction goes...

University of Alberta medical researchers have made a major breakthrough in understanding a group of deadly disorders that includes the disease made famous in the movie Lorenzo's Oil.Because this group of diseases is inherited, the discovery could help in screening carriers and lead to prevention or an effective treatment.Richard Rachubinski, in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, is an expert on structures in cells called peroxisomes which are involved in breaking down fatty acids. They...

NORTH BILLERICA, Mass., Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Seahorse Bioscience, Inc., leader in the design and development of instruments for measuring cellular bioenergetics, announced that TheScientist magazine cited their XF96 Extracellular Flux Analyzer as a 2009 Top Ten Innovation. A panel of scientific experts assembled by TheScientist honored the XF Analyzer as the first instrument to measure the two energy pathways of the cell in a microplate, enabling scientists to generate a comprehensive...