Discoveries

By Coleman Harris Caption: “Scanning electron micrograph of S. aureus bacteria escaping destruction by human white blood cells” by NIAID licensed under CC BY 2.0. Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a pathogen that often causes the typical “staph infections” that form abscesses or boils.  The pathogen maximizes its ability to… Read More

By Amanda N. John­­­son Reprinted with permission from ACS Nano2019, 13, 10, 10939-10960. Copyright 2019 American Chemical Society. A recent study reported in ACS Nano adds vaccination to the list of human activities where the means to an end are just as important as the end itself. Read More

By Lorena Infante Lara DNA replication is an intensely complicated process that relies on the actions and interactions of many, many proteins. At least 593, to be precise. Using iPOND (isolation of proteins on nascent DNA), a tool that was first developed in his lab, David… Read More

Figure reproduced under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike-No Mirror Sites License from C. Strothman, et al., (2019) J. Cell Biol., Published online August 16, DOI: 10.1083/jcb.201905019. Copyright 2019, C. Strothman, et al. Microtubules – protein polymers consisting of heterodimers of α- and β-tubulin – play a critical role in cell division, morphology,… Read More

By Lorena Infante Lara Densely packed microvilli (dark circles) naturally arrange into overlapping hexagons (red). Image of microvilli cross-sections courtesy of Matt Tyska. Modified with permission. New technologies allow us to look at old knowledge with fresh eyes. Scientists have known about microvilli for a long time. Electron microscopy showed… Read More

Figure reproduced under the CC BY-NC-ND license from C. P. Nielsen, et al., Cell Rep., 28, 1074. The WNT family of signaling proteins plays an important role in the regulation of cell proliferation, differentiation, motility, and migration via multiple pathways that are frequently dysregulated in cancer. The well-known canonical WNT… Read More

By Deborah Roby Irina Kaverina. The Cell and Developmental Biology labs of Irina Kaverina and collaborators Guoqiang Gu and Chris Wright recently published work in Current Biology that presents a newly discovered means by which the pancreas maintains glucose homeostasis. This work illuminates the crucial steps pancreatic β cells take to… Read More

Figure reproduced under the CC BY 4.0 license from E. M. Shockley, et al. (2019) NPJ Syst. Biol. Appl. 5, 23. Multi-input/multi-output (MIMO) signaling systems, defined as networks that coordinate numerous inputs (e.g., enzyme substrates, receptor ligands, allosteric modulators) to yield multiple outputs (e.g., products, secondary signaling molecules, etc.)… Read More

By Deborah Roby The influenza virus prevents its own destruction and causes virulence by a newly discovered method. The non-structural protein 1 (NS1) of the influenza A virus allows disease proliferation by binding a protein that activates the host’s immune reaction. The lab of Yi Ren, in collaboration with researchers… Read More

By Lorena Infante Lara Research from the labs of Roland Stein (Molecular Physiology & Biophysics) and Chris Wright (Cell & Developmental Biology) suggests that the chromatin remodeling complex Swi/Snf, when bound to transcription factor Pdx1, is required for controlling the growth rate of the embryonic pancreas and for maintaining β cell identity… Read More