UNIVERSIDAD CARLOS III DE MADRID IMAGE: THE TOP IMAGE SHOWS THE FORCES GENERATED BY AN EXTERNAL MAGNETIC FIELD ON PARTICLES EMBEDDED IN THE MATERIAL. THESE INTERACTIONS ARE SIMULATED BY A COMPUTATIONAL MODEL THAT IS ABLE TO GUIDE THE MANUFACTURING AND EXPERIMENTAL PROCESS (MIDDLE IMAGE). FINALLY, THE GENERATED FORCES ARE TRANSMITTED TO THE CELLS CULTURED ON...
BY MONIQUE BROUILLETTE MAY 6, 2022 STEFANIA PELFINI, LA WAZIYA PHOTOGRAPHYGETTY IMAGES Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize in 2012 for the discovery of his eponymous “Yamanaka factors,” which can revert cells to their embryonic state. The factors seemed promising for reversing signs of aging, but they reset the age of the cells too far back in time....
Diana Kwon Cryo-electron tomography and related techniques can showcase the insides of cells in striking detail. Credit: S. Albert et al./PNAS (CC BY 4.0) For a few weeks in 2017, Wanda Kukulski found herself binge-watching an unusual kind of film: videos of the insides of cells. They were made using a technique called cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) that...
by NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases A transmission electron microscopic image of hepatitis virus particles. Credit: CDC/ E.H. Cook, Jr. In a new paper published in Nature, scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, describe the structure of a key protein on the surface...
UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Most of the cells in our bodies – be they bone, muscle or pancreas cells – are locked into the right place with the help of tiny anchors (called ‘focal adhesions’). These strong anchors use protein chains to link the cell to collagen, the protein that gives structure to our...
Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have overturned conventional wisdom on the workings of vital hormone receptors within cells, a finding that could boost drug development for diabetes and related metabolic disorders, cancer, and other diseases. The scientists in UVA’s Department of Pharmacology outline an entirely new paradigm to explain the activation...
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT DRESDEN IMAGE: FLUORESCENT SOFT BEADS PASSING THROUGH THE NARROWING CHANNELS OF A BIOCHIP. CREDIT: © MPZPM, SALVATORE GIRARDO Modern vaccines such as those against Sars-CoV-2 use tiny lipid spheres to transport genetic information into cells and let the body build up an immune defense against the virus. A team of scientists from Erlangen,...
New research has uncovered a way SARS coronaviruses delay an immune defence against them. The coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003 and the one causing the current pandemic may prevent cells from responding to infection in a similar manner. They do this by making a viral protein that keeps molecules from moving through pores in...
BY ALISA ZAPP MACHALEK A cross-section of a cell showing organelles. Credit: Judith Stoffer. Welcome to our tour of the cell! Imagine you’ve shrunk down to about 3 millionths of your normal size. You are now about 0.5 micrometers tall (a micrometer is 1/1,000th of a millimeter). At this scale, a medium-sized human cell looks as...
by University of Pennsylvania Immunohistochemistry for alpha-synuclein showing positive staining (brown) of an intraneural Lewy-body in the Substantia nigra in Parkinson’s disease. Credit: Wikipedia Many genetic mutations have been found to be associated with a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. Yet for most of these variants, the mechanism through which they act remains unclear. Now...
