intracellular

Fox Chase Cancer Center scientists identify immune-system mutation

...from the thymus gland, are essential for combating intracellular viral and bacterial infections (cell-mediated immunity) and also for helping other white blood cells (B cells, derived from bone marrow) generate antibodies against foreign agents that enter the body. Other T cells are known as killer cells because t...

Bound for destruction: Ubiquitination protects against improper Notch signaling

... “juxtracrine?interactioncauses the cleavage of an intracellular region of the Notch protein,loosing it into the cy... andin reductions of the total amount of the Notch intracellular domain inthe cytoplasm of treated cells. Taken together, these results suggestedthat Nedd4 works as ...

Alcohol's effects on gene expression in the central nervous system

...esponsive to alcohol include genes involved in the intracellular signaling process (which can alter how the neuron functions), neuropeptide signaling (which modulates nerve cell activity), and myelin structure (which is needed for communication between nerve cells)," said McBride. "Gene expression profiling has al...

New SARS Protein Linked To Important Cell Doorway

...z A, Lee CA, Diamond MS, Fremont DH. Structure and intracellular targeting of the SARS-Coronavirus Orf7a Accessory Protein. Structure, January 2005, 75-85. Funding from the National Institutes of Health supported this research. ...

MSI releases 'moleculizer' - a new approach to simulation of intracellular biochemical networks

...d in our quest toprovide an accurate simulation of intracellular biochemical networks.""I've designed Moleculizer to be intuitive for biologists," said Dr.Larry Lok, a mathematician who conceived and programmed Moleculizer."Its parallel simplifications in simulation setup and output providedata in a way that is me...

DNA Recombination and Repair—A New Twist to RecA Function

... myosin and dynein, proteins that use ATP to ferry intracellular cargo along fibers made of actin or tubulin proteins. The ATP-dependent assembly of actin or tubulin fibers itself can work as a motor: for instance, the march of white blood cells toward pathogens is powered by the growth of actin filaments pushing ...

Novel ultrafast laser detection of cancer cells also may improve understanding of stem cells

...ic differences in normal and cancer cells by using intracellular mitochondria as biomarkers for disease. This technique holds promise for detecting cancer at a very early stage and could nearly eliminate delays in diagnosis and treatment." The technique is effective because "it measures changes in the cell archit...

Tiny scaffolding allows stem cells to become working fat cells

... fibers are spun out onto a mat that resembles the intracellular matrix that bonds cells together in normal tissue. The fibers are about the size of a collagen fiber, several nanometers (a billionth of a meter) across, and provide tensile strength to support the growing tissue," Kniss said. The researchers then "...

Scientists discover that host cell lipids facilitate bacterial movement

...e cell. In the case of Listeria, we find that this intracellular pathogen can harness signals from the inner rather...he most exciting and surprising finding is that an intracellular bacteria is able to attract host cell membrane lipids to its surface and these membrane lipids facil...

Stopping smallpox in its tracks: A new anti-viral approach

...-1 signaling molecule, which normally initiates an intracellular cascade that facilitates viral replication. This study shows that drugs that interfere with erbB-1 signaling inhibit SPGF-induced viral replication and spread. The authors show that treatment with these erbB-1 inhibitors are effective in lowering mor...

New understanding of DNA repair may pave way to cancer treatments

...first to demonstrate ATF2's role in DNA repair, an intracellular process that prevents formation of genetic mutations, including those that lead to cancer. "This is the first time we've seen a protein which has been implicated in gene regulation possess an independent function--in DNA repair--while both functions...

Second messenger NAADP shows fast, dose-related impact on satiety cycle

...has "a short history compared to other traditional intracellular messengers and many aspects of this molecule remain under investigation. However the potential of this new messenger as a therapeutic target should not be underestimated," she added. ...

Motor transport in bio-nano systems

...f small vesicles which exhibit complex patterns of intracellular traffic: some vesicles travel from the cell center to the periphery and vice versa, some shuttle between different organelles or cellular compartments. An extreme case is provided by the long-ranged transport of vesicles and organelles along the axon...

Study shows how retinoic acid enters a cell's nucleus

...CRABP-II is a member of a group of proteins called intracellular lipid binding proteins (ILBP), which don't have a recognizable NLS. But now researchers have something new to look for -- folds in a molecule's structure and amino acids that flip when exposed to a hormone or a drug. Noy currently is working with an ...

USC researchers determine mechanism of action of chemotherapy drug

...s that agents that disrupt metabolism and increase intracellular zinc levels have potential applications as anticancer therapeutics." ...

Retroviral resistance gene found

...ct that the overexpression of FEZ1 interferes with intracellular trafficking of the viral preintegration complex and traps the viral DNA in the cytoplasm. We hope that learning more about this transport machinery might reveal a new target for antiviral drugs in the treatment of HIV-1 disease." ...

Pinpointing a culprit molecule in Alzheimer's disease

...te we have little evidence for the accumulation of intracellular Ab in these mice; thus, they provide an excellent tool to study the effects of secreted Ab independently of APP transgenes." McGowan et al.: "Aß42 is Essential for Parenchymal and Vascular Amyloid Deposition in Mice" Publishing in Neuron, Vol. 47, J...

'Jumping genes' contribute to the uniqueness of individual brains

...A, the transposable L1 elements were thought to be intracellular parasites or leftovers from our distant evolutionary past. It has been known for a long time that L1 elements are active in testis and ovaries, which explains how they potentially play a role in evolution by passing on new insertions to future gener...

A molecule impedes the destruction of the 'Brucella' bacteria

...gy scientific magazine. Brucella is a model of an intracellular parasite, a category that includes other important bacteria, such as those of tuberculosis or legionelosis. Brucella penetrates the macrophages within membranous vesicles that are not fused with lysosomes (structures containing cellular products nece...

Chemical 'band-aid' prevents heart failure in mice with muscular dystrophy

...to allow the simultaneous measurement of force and intracellular calcium concentration in individual myocytes as they are stretched. Yasuda's device uses microcarbon fibers stuck by electrostatic attraction to each end of a single cardiac myocyte. As the myocyte is stretched between the carbon fibers, a transmitte...

Treatments have same target, different responses for lung cancer patients with genetic mutation

...rlotinib (Tarceva) work by blocking signals in the intracellular domain of EGFR--between the EGFR and the cell nucl...onally, many NSCLC patients with mutations in this intracellular domain of EGFR appear to benefit from these drugs. Toru Mukohara, M.D., of the Dana-Farber Cancer ...

Nanoscale method for investigating living systems

...ly popular in biomedical applications ranging from intracellular tagging of molecules to applications such as tracking devices for neuronal receptors and as interfaces between nerve cells. Researchers have labeled the dots with isotopes, injected them into mice and then tracked them with tomography. The Wisconsin...

Water management in cells

...s place if there is a large difference between the intracellular and extracellular salt concentrations. From this the researcher concluded that the efflux of organics is a second line of defence, which is only activated if there are considerable problems. All organisms in the natural environment are confronted w...

Researchers discover new tumor defense system

...hosphorylated and they also prevent an increase in intracellular calcium that is essential for the cytotoxic T lymphocytes to kill the tumor cells. Dr. Kleinfeld suspects that these signaling events are being blocked at the cells' membranes. These results from the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies rais...

US/African project deciphers deadly parasite genome

...olic pathways that Theileria lacks are found in an intracellular structure called the apicoplast. "This information could be used to develop drugs that could be targeted specifically at each parasite or at several related parasites," he says. TIGR determined the genome sequence of T. parva and shared in the annot...

Researchers learn how blood vessel cells cope with their pressure-packed job

...ent of their length, 60 times per minute) produced intracellular arrays of parallel "stress fibers" in a few hours....nline Oct. 24, Chien's group reported that when an intracellular protein called Rho was chemically inhibited, stress fibers grew in the "wrong" direction; they grew ...

Membrane research opens window to benefits for plants, humans

...RE-shid). The residues, they found, latch onto an intracellular loop of the protein, blocking the water channel wh...plasmic entrance of the channel with an eolongated intracellular loop." By atomic scale, the structural difference between open and closed channels is telling. When...

Compound from marine bacteria shows potential as multiple myeloma therapy

.... Because NPI-0052 and bortezomib attack the same intracellular target in different ways, the Dana-Farber researchers contend that combining these two agents might be more effective than using either therapy alone ?and be better tolerated by patients as well. In preclinical studies, NPI-0052 blocks a wider rang...

How Rickettsial pathogens break into cells

...suggest that Rickettsia, which--like several other intracellular parasites--prevent cell death in order to multiply inside living cells, may also use this property of their receptor for a succesful infection "We found that Ku70 interacts with a bacterial protein called rOmpB, which is present on the surface of Ri...

Researchers discover new form of cancer gene regulation

...raction with the cell surface. Through a series of intracellular events, these signals trigger gene activation or repression through action of transcription factors in the nucleus of the cell. The altered gene expression profile then results in cellular differentiation, cellular proliferation or cellular death as...

Chlamydia parasite lives off our fat

...ause it knows its hosts so well. It's an "obligate intracellular parasite" which means that it relies on its eukary...ins were screened for those that targeted to yeast intracellular organelles. They identified four proteins that were specifically recruited to lipid droplets. The ...

Living taste cells produced outside the body

...er bitter or sweet taste stimuli with increases of intracellular calcium, another property characteristic of mature taste cells. Lead author Hakan Ozdener, MD, PhD, observes, "Although scientists have tried for many years to maintain taste cells in a long-term culture system, it was commonly believed that these ...

Newly identified mechanism helps explain why people of African descent are more vulnerable to TB

... potentially important human mechanism for killing intracellular pathogens," said Philip Liu, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and co-lead author of the paper. African Americans have significantly lower levels of vitamin D ...

Immune system response to viral DNA is unique

...le is known about whether cells can detect foreign intracellular DNA or how this system might function." Stetson a... the study, compared the innate immune response to intracellular DNA with other virus recognition pathways. "We found that this novel pathway seems to function diff...

Manipulating single cell receptor alters animal behavior

...ennsylvania were the first to demonstrate that two intracellular events, both stimulated by the same cell receptor,...s says, "The research highlights the importance of intracellular events in the regulation of behavioral states and provides new information about the means through w...

Ticks, flukes, and genomics: Emerging pathogens revealed

...se the pathogens causing ehrlichiosis are obligate intracellular bacteria--able to thrive only inside host cells--they are hard to isolate and study in the lab, Hotopp adds. "How are these diseases different? How are they the same? Can we correlate certain genes with certain characteristics? For the first time, ou...

Sea coral's trick helps scientists tag proteins

...bulin filaments and found the expected patterns of intracellular protein distribution. Dendra belongs to a small family of green-to-red PAFPs. The first protein in this family, Kaede--which is Japanese for maple leaf--was discovered by Japanese researcher Atsushi Miyawaki four years ago. "All known Kaede-like pr...

Genomics-based vaccine could prevent deadly cattle disease

...r T cells. Second, they know that T. parva is an intracellular pathogen--it infects and secretes proteins inside cattle white blood cells, which become malignant. The white blood cell then unwittingly passes small fragments of the secreted parasitic proteins associated with a certain type if its own proteins alo...

Potential heart benefit found in stem cells

...tissue, and connexin 43, a protein that assists in intracellular interactions The in vitro data suggests that stem cells from this source have significant CM potential and are potentially valuable not only because they can be easily collected from young volunteers, but also because of their collection-efficacy. A...

'Genetic network' guards against lethal DNA damage

...ses to oxidative stress necessary for reducing the intracellular levels of highly reactive molecules that bind to and damage DNA. The yeast has about 6,000 genes, of which about 1,000 are essential to survival and 5,000 are not, Boeke said. Specifically, 1,000 of the 5,000 non-essential genes are important enough...

First direct mechanical communication of mitochondria, cardiomyocyte nucleus shown

...hemically removed which allows them to control the intracellular medium. They believed that in the tightly packed m...nctional properties." This additional evidence of intracellular mechanical signaling "may have important physiological significance," Veksler said. He noted that a ...

New egg freezing technique offers hope to hundreds of women

...copic respiratory structures in the cytoplasm) and intracellular membranes amongst the EG-treated eggs changes to the amount and density of cortical granules (particles that harden the exterior of the egg once it has been fertilised to prevent other sperm penetrating it) changes to the structure of the egg ext...

Schepens scientists are first to discover angiogenesis switch inside blood vessel cells

...nzymes for the lipid that was at least part of the intracellular switch for which they and other scientists have been searching. They also concluded that blood vessel growth or regression was dependent on the relative activity of the two enzymes and on the amount of the lipid within the endothelial cells. "Unde...

New light microscope sharpens scientists' focus

...tor in unlocking at the molecular level secrets of intracellular dynamics that are unattainable by other methods," observed Davidson, who directs the optical microscopy division at FSU. The researchers also acknowledge that the time needed to collect the thousands of single molecule images that go into each PAL...

Mechanism for neurodenegerative diseases linked to transport proteins

...tive diseases to mutations in proteins involved in intracellular transport. This led researchers to wonder if the deranged polyQ proteins inhibit fast axonal transport in several diseases, including SBMA, in which a mutation in the receptor for testosterone leads to the loss of motor neurons. In the new study, Bra...

Researchers discover how bacteria sense their environments

...physics that is a virtual marathon in the world of intracellular communication. Ten angstroms equal a nanometer, which is one-billionth of a meter. Sang-Youn Park, a former graduate student in Cornell's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and senior research associates Peter Borbat and Alexandrine Bilwe...

Salk scientists untangle steroid hormone signaling in plants

...steroids bind a receptor on the cell's surface, an intracellular enzyme called BIN2 is inactivated by an unknown mechanism. Previously, investigators thought that inactivation of BIN2, which is a kinase, freed a second protein known as BES1 from entrapment in the cytoplasm, the watery compartment surrounding a cel...

Ozone recovering, but unlikely to stabilize at pre-1980 levels, says study

...steroids bind a receptor on the cell's surface, an intracellular enzyme called BIN2 is inactivated by an unknown mechanism. Previously, investigators thought that inactivation of BIN2, which is a kinase, freed a second protein known as BES1 from entrapment in the cytoplasm, the watery compartment surrounding a cel...

Researchers map spread of pathogens in the human body

...nced fluorescence microscopy techniques to observe intracellular growth of Salmonella bacteria within living cells....

Cellular traffic backups implicated in skeletal malformations

A defective link in the intracellular protein "transit system" may lie at the heart of some craniofacial defects, new research in zebrafish suggests. In the Sept. 17 online issue of Nature Genetics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers report the identification of a mutati...

The biggest bug in gut discomfort

...kly exits, heading off-road for its own network of intracellular hideouts. These C. jejuni-filled vacuoles make the...tus. Previous studies showing C. jejuni gaining intracellular access to intestinal epithelial cells despite its large size suggested to Watson and Galan that the ...

Researchers in Montréal and the US create model of key immune-system component

...t internalize, kill, and digest bacteria within an intracellular compartment called the phagosome, a major battleground in the host-pathogen conflict. Despite its important role in our normal immune defense, the organization and functioning of the phagosome are poorly understood." By analyzing a cell line of p...

Lost in the labyrinth

...rsity of Lund in Sweden, have now uncovered how an intracellular communication pathway contributes to this process. Because defects in such pathways and in the development of stem cells frequently lead to leukemia and other diseases, the work should give researchers a new handle on processes within cells that lead...

Power-boosting signal in muscle declines with age

...the declining mitochondrial function and increased intracellular fat content seen with aging could be traced back t...he reduced mitochondrial function and dysregulated intracellular fat metabolism associated with aging-induced insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes," the researcher...

Scripps research study shows humans and plants share common regulatory pathway

...s a number of responses that include activation of intracellular signaling pathways, cytokine production and apoptosis or programmed cell death. Despite the fact that various models of Nod1 activation have been described, little has been known about other proteins that might affect the protein’s activation. In con...

NIDA study identifies genes that might help some people abstain from smoking

...in development. In addition to genes implicated in intracellular signaling and intercellular interactions, a number of genes involved in other processes have also been identified. While many of the genes identified through this effort make sense because of their role in supporting new neural connections in the br...

Proteasome activator enhances survival of Huntington's disease neuronal model cells

... damaged proteins. To accomplish that, a number of intracellular systems work in concert to keep the cell healthy a...n present major problems to the clearing up of the intracellular environment. In Huntington's disease (HD) the disease provoking mutation in the huntingtin gene even...

Biodegradable microspheres deliver time release vaccines, stimulate different immune response

...an elicit a CMI provides hope for vaccines against intracellular diseases that we currently don't have effective vaccines for, like malaria, tuberculosis and even AIDS. "If we understand how an adjuvant activates the dendritic cells, we can start tailoring our vaccines to induce a better cellular response. If ...

Revealing the machinery underlying the 'plastic' juvenile brain

... show that visual experience differently activates intracellular signaling pathways that control gene expression in the visual cortex of juvenile and adult mice, and that this developmental downregulation could regulate the developmental reduction of plasticity occurring in the adult visual cortex," concluded Pizz...

Iowa State scientists demonstrate first use of nanotechnology to enter plant cells

... would provide plant biologists with a window into intracellular events. The Iowa State team, which has been working on the research in plants for less than three years, started with an Iowa State University proprietary technology developed previously by Lin’s research group. It is a porous, silica nanoparticle...