How cytoplasm 'feels' to a cell's components

Under a microscope, a cell's cytoplasm can resemble a tiny underwater version of New York's Times Square: Thousands of proteins swarm through a cytoplasm's watery environment, coming together and breaking apart like a cytoskeletal ...

Collaborative research reveals a new view of cell division

Basic research into the mechanisms of cell division, using eggs and embryos from frogs and starfish, has led researchers to an unexpected discovery about how animal cells control the forces that shape themselves.

New light on bacterial microcompartments

Bacteria contain "microcompartments," which are poorly understood organelles that play critical roles in metabolism. Understanding how they work may ultimately enable engineering them for useful applications. In salmonella, ...

Inside the cell, an ocean of buffeting waves

Conventional wisdom holds that the cytoplasm of mammalian cells is a viscous fluid, with organelles and proteins suspended within it, jiggling against one another and drifting at random. However, a new biophysical study led ...

Faster cell mixing leads to larger plants

The contents of plant cells undergo continuous mixing by a process known as cytoplasmic streaming. Yet although this process was discovered more than 200 years ago, its exact purpose has remained unclear. Motoki Tominaga ...

Cell nuclei harbor factories that transcribe genes

Our genetic heritage is contained—and protected—in the nucleus of the cells that compose us. Copies of the DNA exit the nucleus to be read and translated into proteins in the cell cytoplasm. The transit between the nucleus ...

Membranes in tight corners

Photosynthesis takes place in specialized membrane systems, made up of stacked disks linked together by unstacked planar leaflets. A team of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich has now identified a protein that ...

Researchers strike gold with nanotech vaccine

Scientists in the US have developed a novel vaccination method that uses tiny gold particles to mimic a virus and carry specific proteins to the body's specialist immune cells.

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