Standing guard between a cell's nucleus and its main chamber, called the cytoplasm, are thousands of behemoth protein structures called nuclear pore complexes, or NPCs. NPCs are like the bouncers of a cell's nucleus, tightly ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 13, 2018
0
119
Filamentous polymers called microtubules play vital roles in chromosome segregation and molecular transport. An LMU team has now examined how microtubule lengths vary in response to changes in the availability of their protein ...
General Physics
Apr 9, 2018
0
9
Sander Wezenberg, and PhD students Thomas van Leeuwen and Kaja Sitkowska, from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, spoke to us about their work in chirality and molecular motors, and the seaside scene on the cover ...
Materials Science
Sep 22, 2017
0
5
It is one of the great mysteries in biology: How does a cell neatly distribute its replicated DNA between two daughter cells? For more than a century, we have known that DNA in the cell is comparable to a plate of spaghetti—a ...
Cell & Microbiology
Sep 7, 2017
0
105
A toddler running sometimes loses footing because both feet come off the ground at the same time. Kinesin motors that move materials around in cells have the same problem, which limits how fast they can traverse a microtubule ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 25, 2017
0
268
A team of scientists has used microwaves to unravel the exact structure of a tiny molecular motor. The nano-machine consists of just a single molecule, made up of 27 carbon and 20 hydrogen atoms (C27H20). Like a macroscopic ...
Materials Science
Jul 12, 2017
0
33
A diagnostic technique that can detect tiny molecules signalling the presence of cancer could be on the horizon.
Optics & Photonics
Jun 27, 2017
4
606
Understanding how proteins and other molecules move around inside cells is important for understanding how cells function. Scientists use an experiment called Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching, or FRAP, to investigate ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 25, 2017
0
6
Researchers at Umeå University in Sweden have discovered that specific DNA sequences that are rich in the DNA building block guanine in the yeast species, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, can form four-stranded DNA. In a study ...
Biotechnology
May 16, 2016
0
1066
German scientists have developed a new class of molecular motors that rotate unidirectionally at speeds of up to 1 kHz when exposed to sunlight at room temperature. This unique combination of features opens up novel applications ...
Nanophysics
Sep 29, 2015
0
10
