Cell biology is a branch of biological sciences that investigates the structure, function, dynamics, and regulation of cells as the fundamental units of life. It encompasses the study of cellular organelles, membranes, cytoskeleton, intracellular trafficking, signal transduction, cell cycle control, cell division, differentiation, and cell death. Using approaches from molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, microscopy, and biophysics, cell biology analyzes how macromolecular assemblies and biochemical networks give rise to cellular behaviors. It also examines cell–cell and cell–matrix interactions, and provides a mechanistic framework for understanding development, physiology, and pathologies such as cancer, neurodegeneration, and infectious diseases.
From his lab at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy Drug Discovery Institute, Mingfu Wu, associate professor, is offering new hope for treating heart disease by sharing his insights into the fundamental process ...
Bio & Medicine
Mar 17, 2025
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With the long-term goal of creating living cells from non-living components, scientists in the field of synthetic biology work with RNA origami. This tool uses the multifunctionality of the natural RNA biomolecule to fold ...
Bio & Medicine
Mar 17, 2025
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What does the inside of a cell really look like? In the past, standard microscopes were limited in how well they could answer this question. Now, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Oxford, in collaboration ...
Optics & Photonics
Aug 7, 2024
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96
Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a rare population of cells in tumor tissues that drive tumorigenesis, recurrence, and metastasis. Therefore, the development of anti-tumor therapies that can eliminate CSCs has significant implications ...
Bio & Medicine
Dec 22, 2023
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By giving living cells a "nano-poke" and monitoring the resulting changes in the intracellular environment, researchers have gotten their first glimpse of how whole cells respond to external mechanical pressure.
Bio & Medicine
Nov 21, 2023
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A new way to see details smaller than half the wavelength of light has revealed how nanoscale scaffolding inside cells bridges to the macroscale during cell division. Unlike earlier superresolution techniques, the one developed ...
Bio & Medicine
Jul 20, 2023
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One of the main ways cells "talk" to each other to coordinate essential biological activities such as muscle contraction, hormone release, neuronal firing, digestion and immune activation is through calcium signaling.
Bio & Medicine
Jul 10, 2023
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Research in animal models has demonstrated that stem-cell derived heart tissues have promising potential for therapeutic applications to treat cardiac disease. But before such therapies are viable and safe for use in humans, ...
Bio & Medicine
Mar 8, 2023
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Cell membranes are barriers that maintain cellular homeostasis, and the intracellular delivery of biologically functional molecules, including peptides, proteins, and nucleic acids to manipulate cellular functions. Conventional ...
Bio & Medicine
Mar 6, 2023
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169
Mechanics plays a fundamental role in cell biology. Cells navigate these mechanical forces to explore their environments and sense the behavior of surrounding living cells. The physical characteristics of a cell's environment ...
Bio & Medicine
Oct 27, 2022
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