Cytoskeleton News and Research

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Nicotine can contribute to atherosclerosis

Cigarette smoke has long been considered the main risk factor for heart disease. But new research from Brown University in Providence, R.I., shows that nicotine itself, a component of cigarette smoke, can contribute to the disease process by changing cell structure in a way that promotes migration and invasion of the smooth muscle cells that line blood vessels.

24 Feb 2012

New link between beta-arrestin and short-term memory

Biomedical scientists at the University of California, Riverside have identified a new link between a protein called beta-arrestin and short-term memory that could open new doors for the therapeutic treatment of neurological disorders, particularly Alzheimer's disease.

10 Feb 2012

BPS Annual Meeting to be held Feb. 25 - 29 in San Diego

The latest news and discoveries in medicine, physics, environmental science, and interdisciplinary fields will be featured at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society (BPS), held Feb. 25 - Feb. 29, 2012, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif. With more than 4,000 poster presentations, 200 exhibits, 20 symposia, and 6,000 research scientists in attendance each year, the BPS Annual Meeting is the largest meeting of biophysicists in the world.

7 Feb 2012

Small molecules at cell's membrane enable cell movement

Cell biologists at Johns Hopkins have identified key steps in how certain molecules alter a cell's skeletal shape and drive the cell's movement.

3 Feb 2012

Fluorescence microscopy reveals 3-D picture of myoV's transport capacity

A new study in the Journal of General Physiology uses state-of-the-art fluorescence microscopy to provide a striking 3-D picture of how class V myosins (myoV) "walk" along their actin track.

1 Feb 2012

Small molecules at the cell’s membrane enable cell movement

Cell biologists at Johns Hopkins have identified key steps in how certain molecules alter a cell’s skeletal shape and drive the cell’s movement.

31 Jan 2012

Rotational motion plays a critical role in ability of breast cells to form acini

In a study that holds major implications for breast cancer research as well as basic cell biology, scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered a rotational motion that plays a critical role in the ability of breast cells to form the spherical structures in the mammary gland known as acini.

27 Jan 2012

Study explains how cells regulate their bonds during new blood vessel development

New research explains how cells regulate their bonds during the development of new blood vessels. For the first time, the role of the protein Raf-1 in determining the strength of the bond between cells has been shown.

18 Jan 2012

Stem cell transplantation prevents further traumatic axonal injury

For years, researchers seeking new therapies for traumatic brain injury have been tantalized by the results of animal experiments with stem cells. In numerous studies, stem cell implantation has substantially improved brain function in experimental animals with brain trauma. But just how these improvements occur has remained a mystery.

13 Jan 2012

Alteration in ISG15 pathway triggers breast cancer metastasis

Research led by Shyamal Desai, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has discovered a key change in the body's defense system that increases the potential for breast cancer to spread to other parts of the body.

4 Jan 2012

Researchers discover miR-520 blocks cancer-promoting signaling pathway

MicroRNAs or miRNAs are tiny RNA molecules that have only about 20 nucleotides and do not code for proteins. They regulate many important processes in cells by binding to target messenger RNAs - the instructions for protein production -, thus blocking production of the respective protein. In cancer, the production of some miRNAs is often reduced or amplified. This particularly affects miRNAs that regulate the activity of cancer-promoting genes.

17 Dec 2011

Scientists solve mystery behind why people with defective hemoglobin do not contract malaria

Why do people with a hereditary mutation of the red blood pigment hemoglobin not contract severe malaria? Scientists in the group headed by Prof. Michael Lanzer of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Heidelberg University Hospital have now solved this mystery.

19 Nov 2011

Researchers discover cell receptor for CDT toxin of C. difficile bacterium

A research group led by Freiburg pharmacologist Prof. Dr. Klaus Aktories and their American colleagues have discovered the cell receptor for the toxin CDT of the bacterium Clostridium difficile.

27 Sep 2011

Researchers reveal specific process by which HIV virus infects healthy T cells

A George Mason University researcher team has revealed the specific process by which the HIV virus infects healthy T cells-a process previously unknown. The principal investigator, HIV researcher Yuntao Wu, says he hopes this breakthrough will start a new line on inquiry into how researchers can use this knowledge to create drugs that could limit or halt HIV infection.

25 Aug 2011

Single-molecule imaging reveals how cells prepare to interact with biochemical signals

Researchers at Harvard Medical School have discovered that structural elements in the cell play a crucial role in organizing the motion of cell-surface receptors, proteins that enable cells to receive signals from other parts of the organism.

19 Aug 2011

Study reveals several compounds that block cancer cell invasion

Metastasis-the spread of cancer from the place where it first started to another place in the body-is the most common reason that cancer treatments fail. To metastasize, some types of cancer cells rely on invadopodia, cellular membrane projections that act like feet, helping them "walk" away from the primary tumor and invade surrounding tissues.

27 Jul 2011

Specific yeast protein can promote spontaneous prion formation

It's a chicken and egg question. Where do the infectious protein particles called prions come from? Essentially clumps of misfolded proteins, prions cause neurodegenerative disorders, such as mad cow/Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, in humans and animals.

25 Jul 2011

Researchers use AFM to characterize ovarian cell structure for cancer diagnosis

Using ovarian surface epithelial cells from mice, researchers from Virginia Tech have released findings from a study that they believe will help in cancer risk assessment, cancer diagnosis, and treatment efficiency in a technical journal: Nanomedicine.

7 Jul 2011

Ovarian cells are stiffer and more viscous when benign

6 Jul 2011

New technique explores how cells react to rapidly changing patterns of chemoattractants

Many cell types in higher organisms are capable of implementing directed motion in response to the presence of certain chemical attractants in their vicinity. A team led by Dr. Doris Heinrich of the Faculty of Physics and the Center for NanoScience (CeNS) at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit-t (LMU) in Munich has developed a novel technique to expose an ensemble of living cells to rapidly varying concentrations of chemoattractants.

6 Jul 2011