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​Epithelial cells form the lining of cavities and the surfaces of organs and blood vessels in animals. A distinctive feature of epithelial cells is their polarization, as indicated by the segregation of cell cortex proteins into functionally distinct regions. In particular, epithelia have apical and basolateral domains separated by… Read More

A natural signaling molecule that activates cannabinoid receptors in the brain plays a critical role in stress-resilience — the ability to adapt to repeated and acute exposures to traumatic stress, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The findings in a mouse model could have broad implications for the potential… Read More

Fresh insights into living cells, brighter video projectors and more accurate medical tests are just three of the innovations that could result from a new way of fabricating lasers.The new method, developed by an international research team from U of T Engineering, Vanderbilt University, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and… Read More

One way that many forms of cancer evade the toxic effects of chemotherapeutic drugs is through expression of the P-glycoprotein. This membrane protein uses energy from the hydrolysis of ATP to transport over 200 structurally distinct compounds, including many drugs, out of the cell. Because of its widespread expression in… Read More

Biologists who study the malaria mosquito’s “nose” have found that it contains a secondary set of odor sensors that seem to be specially tuned to detect humans. The discovery could aid efforts to figure out how the insects target humans and develop a preference for them. “This appears to be a… Read More

Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is an aggressive cancer that is increasing in incidence in the United States. Wael El-Rifai, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues studied the molecular interaction between gene expression, genomics and epigenetics in EAC. In a study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers utilized an integrated approach to analyze changes in gene expression,… Read More

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) have mapped the conformational changes that occur in a protein “notorious” for pumping chemotherapeutic drugs out of cancer cells and blocking medications from reaching the central nervous system.​ Their report, published this week as a letter in the journal Nature, is an important step forward in understanding… Read More

DNA replication actually starts with the synthesis of a short stretch of RNA by the enzyme DNA primase. Extension of the RNA with a similarly short stretch of DNA by DNA polymerase α (pol α) follows before the more efficient and highly processive DNA polymerases take over to finish the… Read More

A multi-year program with pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim complements an already existing collaboration with Vanderbilt University by focusing on the research and development of small molecule compounds targeting the protein SOS (Son of Sevenless). This molecule activates KRAS, a molecular switch that plays a central role in the onset of some of… Read More

Jonathan Irish, Ph.D., and his colleagues have developed a new language, one that can be used to describe and identify cells. The language — marker enrichment modeling, or MEM — assigns a “MEM label” to cells based on certain features of the cell, usually proteins. Irish and his colleagues hope that MEM,… Read More