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Cell Biology | Highest Quality and Largest Selection of ...

Research activities cover the following areas:

Signal transduction pathways initiated at the cell surface mediate a cells response to the external environment. These affect all aspects of cell behavior, such as the decision to divide and proliferate, to die, to differentiate, or to migrate from one location to another. All research groups in the program have an interest in signal transduction pathways, though with an emphasis on different biological contexts.

The cell division cycle and its regulation by intrinsic and extrinsic factors are of major interest to investigators in this program. The ability to divide inappropriately is the defining feature of cancer cells and it is essential to identify how this process is normally controlled if we are to understand what goes wrong in the disease.

Stem cells divide to produce another stem cell and a daughter cell that looses its ability to divide as it takes on specialized functions. Defects in this differentiation program are a common feature of cancer cells and researchers in the Cell Biology Program are exploring factors involved in this process.

Cell death, through apoptosis, is a major decision that cells take if they find themselves in inappropriate surroundings, or if they are subjected to serious damage. The loss of this fail-safe device is thought to be a major step in most, if not all cancers.

Cells adopt defined shapes that are essential for their specialized functions and this often involves interactions with other cells to form organized tissues and organs. Disruption of normal cell-cell interactions is a key step leading to the process of metastasis that is seen in late stages of cancer.

One of the most striking features of normal embryonic development is the large-scale movements and migrations of cells as they reorganize to form the different body compartments. Outside of the immune system, cell migrations in the adult are normally restricted to localized areas within tissues. A feature of late-stage cancers is metastasis - the ability of cells to migrate inappropriately to other areas of the body - and this is responsible for the majority of cancer deaths.

Animal models have proved invaluable in identifying new molecules that control different aspects of cell biology as well as for observing the effects of specific molecular alterations on cell behavior in a physiological context. Research groups in Cell Biology are using animal models to explore cancer cell biology.

Members of the Cell Biology Program are seeking to translate the knowledge gained from basic research into concrete diagnostic and therapeutic interventions.

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Cell Biology Program | Sloan Kettering Institute

The Department of Cell & Developmental Biology at the University of Michigan Medical School educates and trains undergraduate, graduate, professional, and postgraduate students in the areas of cell biology, embryology, neurobiology, organogenesis, and developmental biology. The history of the department is a fascinating one.

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Cell & Developmental Biology | Michigan Medicine ...

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Current Protocols in Cell Biology - Wiley Online Library

This animation shows you the function of plant and animal cells for middle school and high school biology, including organelles like the nucleus, nucleolus, DNA (chromosomes), ribosomes, mitochondria, etc. Also included are ATP molecules, cytoskeleton, cytoplasm, microtubules, proteins, chloroplasts, chlorophyll, cell walls, cell membrane, cilia, flagellae, etc.

Watch another version of this video, narrated by a teacher, here: https://youtu.be/cbiyKH9uPUw

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Watch other Nucleus Biology videos:- Controlled Experiments: https://youtu.be/D3ZB2RTylR4- Independent vs. Dependent Variables: https://youtu.be/nqj0rJEf3Ew- Active Transport: https://youtu.be/ufCiGz75DAk

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Learn more about the company that created this video: http://www.nucleusmedicalmedia.com/

This animation won a Platinum Best of Show Aurora Award in 2016.

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Biology: Cell Structure - YouTube

Cell, in biology, the basic membrane-bound unit that contains the fundamental molecules of life and of which all living things are composed. A single cell is often a complete organism in itself, such as a bacterium or yeast. Other cells acquire specialized functions as they mature. These cells cooperate with other specialized cells and become the building blocks of large multicellular organisms, such as animals and humans. Although cells are much larger than atoms, they are still very small. The smallest known cells are a group of tiny bacteria called mycoplasmas; some of these single-celled organisms are spheres about 0.3 micrometre in diameter, with a total mass of 1014 gramequal to that of 8,000,000,000 hydrogen atoms. Cells of humans typically have a mass 400,000 times larger than the mass of a single mycoplasma bacterium, but even human cells are only about 20 micrometres across. It would require a sheet of about 10,000 human cells to cover the head of a pin, and each human organism is composed of more than 75,000,000,000,000 cells.

This article discusses the cell both as an individual unit and as a contributing part of a larger organism. As an individual unit, the cell is capable of metabolizing its own nutrients, synthesizing many types of molecules, providing its own energy, and replicating itself in order to produce succeeding generations. It can be viewed as an enclosed vessel, within which innumerable chemical reactions take place simultaneously. These reactions are under very precise control so that they contribute to the life and procreation of the cell. In a multicellular organism, cells become specialized to perform different functions through the process of differentiation. In order to do this, each cell keeps in constant communication with its neighbours. As it receives nutrients from and expels wastes into its surroundings, it adheres to and cooperates with other cells. Cooperative assemblies of similar cells form tissues, and a cooperation between tissues in turn forms organs, which carry out the functions necessary to sustain the life of an organism.

Special emphasis is given in this article to animal cells, with some discussion of the energy-synthesizing processes and extracellular components peculiar to plants. (For detailed discussion of the biochemistry of plant cells, see photosynthesis. For a full treatment of the genetic events in the cell nucleus, see heredity.)

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human disease: Abnormal growth of cells

) The growth of cells in the body is a closely controlled function, which, together with limited and regulated expression of various genes, gives rise to the many different tissues that constitute the whole organism. For the

A cell is enclosed by a plasma membrane, which forms a selective barrier that allows nutrients to enter and waste products to leave. The interior of the cell is organized into many specialized compartments, or organelles, each surrounded by a separate membrane. One major organelle, the nucleus, contains the genetic information necessary for cell growth and reproduction. Each cell contains only one nucleus, whereas other types of organelles are present in multiple copies in the cellular contents, or cytoplasm. Organelles include mitochondria, which are responsible for the energy transactions necessary for cell survival; lysosomes, which digest unwanted materials within the cell; and the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi apparatus, which play important roles in the internal organization of the cell by synthesizing selected molecules and then processing, sorting, and directing them to their proper locations. In addition, plant cells contain chloroplasts, which are responsible for photosynthesis, whereby the energy of sunlight is used to convert molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) into carbohydrates. Between all these organelles is the space in the cytoplasm called the cytosol. The cytosol contains an organized framework of fibrous molecules that constitute the cytoskeleton, which gives a cell its shape, enables organelles to move within the cell, and provides a mechanism by which the cell itself can move. The cytosol also contains more than 10,000 different kinds of molecules that are involved in cellular biosynthesis, the process of making large biological molecules from small ones.

Specialized organelles are a characteristic of cells of organisms known as eukaryotes. In contrast, cells of organisms known as prokaryotes do not contain organelles and are generally smaller than eukaryotic cells. However, all cells share strong similarities in biochemical function.

Cells contain a special collection of molecules that are enclosed by a membrane. These molecules give cells the ability to grow and reproduce. The overall process of cellular reproduction occurs in two steps: cell growth and cell division. During cell growth, the cell ingests certain molecules from its surroundings by selectively carrying them through its cell membrane. Once inside the cell, these molecules are subjected to the action of highly specialized, large, elaborately folded molecules called enzymes. Enzymes act as catalysts by binding to ingested molecules and regulating the rate at which they are chemically altered. These chemical alterations make the molecules more useful to the cell. Unlike the ingested molecules, catalysts are not chemically altered themselves during the reaction, allowing one catalyst to regulate a specific chemical reaction in many molecules.

Biological catalysts create chains of reactions. In other words, a molecule chemically transformed by one catalyst serves as the starting material, or substrate, of a second catalyst and so on. In this way, catalysts use the small molecules brought into the cell from the outside environment to create increasingly complex reaction products. These products are used for cell growth and the replication of genetic material. Once the genetic material has been copied and there are sufficient molecules to support cell division, the cell divides to create two daughter cells. Through many such cycles of cell growth and division, each parent cell can give rise to millions of daughter cells, in the process converting large amounts of inanimate matter into biologically active molecules.

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cell | Definition, Types, & Functions | Britannica.com

The protein TAZ (green) in the cytoplasm (the region outside of the nuclei, blue) promotes the self-renewal of human embryonic stem cells. Credit: Xingliang Zhou/Ying Lab, USC Stem Cell

Just as beauty exists in the eye of the beholder, a signal depends upon the interpretation of the receiver. According to new USC research published in Stem Cell Reports, a protein called TAZ can convey very different signalsdepending upon not only which variety of stem cell, but also which part of the stem cell receives it.

When it comes to varieties, some stem cells are "nave" blank slates; others are "primed" to differentiate into certain types of more specialized cells. Among the truly nave are mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs), while the primed variety includes the slightly more differentiated mouse epiblast stem cells (EpiSCs) as well as so-called human "ESCs"which may not be true ESCs at all.

In the new study, PhD student Xingliang Zhou and colleagues in the laboratory of Qi-Long Ying demonstrated that nave mouse ESCs don't require TAZ in order to self-renew and produce more stem cells. However, they do need TAZ in order to differentiate into mouse EpiSCs.

The scientists observed an even more nuanced situation for the primed varieties of stem cells: mouse EpiSCs and human ESCs. When TAZ is located in the nucleus, this prompts primed stem cells to differentiate into more specialized cell typesa response similar to that of the nave cells. However, if TAZ is in the cytoplasm, or the region between the nucleus and outer membrane, primed stem cells have the opposite reaction: they self-renew.

"TAZ has stirred up a lot of controversy in our field, because it appears to produce diverse and sometimes opposite effects in pluripotent stem cells," said Ying, senior author and associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. "It turns out that TAZ can indeed produce opposite effects, depending upon both its subcellular location and the cell type in question."

First author Zhou added: "TAZ provides a new tool to stimulate stem cells to either differentiate or self-renew. This could have important regenerative medicine applications, including the development of a better way to generate the desired cell types for cell replacement therapy."

Explore further: Study reveals how to better master stem cells' fate

More information: Xingliang Zhou et al, Cytoplasmic and Nuclear TAZ Exert Distinct Functions in Regulating PrimedPluripotency, Stem Cell Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2017.07.019

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The protein TAZ sends 'mixed signals' to stem cells - Phys.Org

docent/ShutterstockWhether or not theres a scientific benefit to being baldwell let the follically challenged among us be the judge of thatscientists continue to search for a balding cure. According to UCLA researchers, that isnt completely out of the question. A team, led by Heather Christofk, PhD, and William Lowry, PhD, found a new way to activate the stem cells in the hair follicle to make hair grow. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, may lead to new drugs to promote hair growth or work as a cure for baldness or alopecia (hair loss linked to factors like hormonal imbalance, stress, aging or chemotherapy).

Working at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, the researchers discovered that the metabolism of the stem cells embedded in hair follicles is different from the metabolism of other cells of the skin. When they altered that metabolic pathway in mice, they discovered they could either stop hair growth, or make hair grow rapidly. They did this by first blocking, then increasing, the production of a metabolitelactategenetically.

Before this, no one knew that increasing or decreasing the lactate would have an effect on hair follicle stem cells, says Dr. Lowry, a professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology, as reported on ScienceDaily. Once we saw how altering lactate production in the mice influenced hair growth, it led us to look for potential drugs that could be applied to the skin and have the same effect.

Two drugs in particularknown by the generic designations of RCGD423 and UK5099influenced hair follicle stem cells in distinct ways to promote lactate production. The use of both drugs to promote hair growth are covered by provisional patent applications. However, they are experimental drugs and have been used in preclinical tests only. They wont be ready for prime time until theyve been tested in humans and approved by the Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective. (While youre waiting for a male pattern baldness cure, check out these natural remedies for hair loss.)

So while it may be some time before these drugs are availableif everto treat baldless or alopecia, researchers are optimistic about the future. Through this study, we gained a lot of interesting insight into new ways to activate stem cells, says Aimee Flores, a predoctoral trainee in Lowrys lab and first author of the study. The idea of using drugs to stimulate hair growth through hair follicle stem cells is very promising given how many millions of people, both men and women, deal with hair loss. I think weve only just begun to understand the critical role metabolism plays in hair growth and stem cells in general; Im looking forward to the potential application of these new findings for hair loss and beyond.

This 7-year-old girl living with alopecia will inspire you.

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This New, Cutting-Edge Treatment Could Be the End of Baldness - Reader's Digest

Cancer cells move through a microfluidic chamber. Credit: Michigan Medicine

As cancer grows, it evolves. Individual cells become more aggressive and break away to flow through the body and spread to distant areas.

What if there were a way to find those early aggressors? How are they different from the rest of the cells? And more importantly: Is there a way to stop them before they spread?

These questions drove a team of researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and Michigan Engineering to develop a tiny device designed to solve these big questions.

"It's especially important to be able to capture those leader cells and understand their biology - why are they so successful, why are they resistant to traditional chemotherapy and how can we target them selectively?" says study author Sofia Merajver, M.D., Ph.D., scientific director of the Breast Oncology Program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"Microfluidic devices are helping us understand biology that was previously not accessible," she says.

The problem with existing microfluidic devices is that the cells don't last long within them. Devices typically lend themselves to brief experiments of several days. But the characteristics of cancer cells change over time.

"A lot of tumor processes like invasion and resistance don't happen overnight. Our goal was to track the long-term evolution of invasion," says lead study author Koh Meng Aw Yong, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Merajver's lab. "We cannot look at just a certain time point, like in a three-day experiment. That might not represent what's happening in the body over time."

So the team developed a new fluidic device to allow them to cultivate cells for longer periods of time. Researchers found the device was stable up to at least three weeks in culture. Their results are published in Scientific Reports.

The cells look like a thin milky line in a chamber that's smaller than a pillbox. They are actually suspended in three dimensions, unlike typical fluidic devices that capture cells in two dimensions. It allows researchers to feed the cancer cells into the device with very minimal disturbance or change to the cells.

The device consists of three tiny molded channels through which cells flow. The cells are fed into one channel. Fluid flows through a parallel channel to provide pressure and flow without disturbing the culture. The flow of fluid through the outer channel mimics what happens with the body's capillaries.

"These forces are important and incorporate everything into one system," Aw Kong says.

The researchers tested the device with two lines of metastatic prostate cancer cells. They were able to isolate the leader cells - those cells that first broke off and would be traveling to distant organs.

After two weeks, they found that the cells from one line were twice as invasive as the other cell line. But by three weeks, that difference was gone, suggesting that the invasive potential of cells may change over time.

The hope is that researchers can find differences in the molecular signature between cells that invade and those that don't. Then, they would target the molecular underpinning with therapies to prevent cancer from invading - essentially keeping the cancer confined and preventing metastasis.

"The device also holds potential to be used to test drugs and detect when cancer becomes resistant. This would allow oncologists to know sooner if a therapy is not working, and perhaps switch the patient to another option," says senior study author Jianping Fu, Ph.D., associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. "Of course, more research is needed to explore this possibility in the future."

"We think we can grow this while the patient is undergoing treatment or monitoring. The device would be able to show us if the cells become more aggressive before a traditional imaging test would detect anything," Aw Yong says.

Researchers next want to extend the work to triple-negative breast cancer, a particularly aggressive form of the disease. Once the leader cells are identified, they will also begin looking at whether these cells have different genetic or molecular markers than the less-aggressive cells.

Explore further: Cell culture system could offer cancer breakthrough

More information: Koh Meng Aw Yong et al, Tracking the tumor invasion front using long-term fluidic tumoroid culture, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-10874-1

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Researchers develop a fluidic device to track over time which cancer cells lead the invasive march - Medical Xpress

A better understanding of the cause of autism may come from an unlikely source, neurological studies of the fruit fly. Neuroscientists working in the biology department at the University of Nevada, Reno have identified a new genetic mechanism they believe is responsible for disruption of the brain pathways connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain; which has separately been linked to autism.

"This is an exciting find," Thomas Kidd, associate professor in the Universitys biology department, said. "In the one striking mutant, called commissureless or comm, there are almost no connections between the two sides of the fruit fly's nervous system."

The fruit fly nervous system research was conducted in Kidd's lab over several years. Fruit flies have brains and nerve cords that form using molecules surprisingly similar to those in human brains and spinal cords. The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS Genetics, shows that the human gene, called PRRG4, functions the same way as the fruit fly Comm at the molecular level, regulating which signals neurons can respond to in their environment.

"The Comm gene was thought to be unique to insects but our work shows that it is not," Elizabeth Justice, lead author of the PLOS Genetics article and a former postdoctoral neuroscience researcher in Kidd's lab, said.

Comm is required for nerve fiber guidance and synapse formation in the fly, so PRRG4 could contribute to the autistic symptoms of WAGR by disturbing either of these processes in the developing human brain.

"PRRG4 appears very likely to control how nerve fibers link the two sides of the nervous system in humans, and this is being actively tested," Sarah Barnum, a former undergraduate researcher in the Kidd lab who worked on the project, said.

The fruit fly has no left-right connections when two copies of the gene are missing. In humans there is a condition called WAGR syndrome in which a group of genes are missing on one chromosome. When the gene Kidd's team is interested in, the PRRG4 gene, is missing, autistic symptoms are observed.

"The function of the gene was obscure but we now show that it can regulate whether key proteins make it to the cell surface when neuronal wiring is navigating," Kidd said. "This would tie it to our colleague Jeff Hutsler's work that indicates autistic changes start in utero."

Jeffrey Hutsler, in the department of Psychology, and the Cognitive and Brain Sciences Program and also in the University's neuroscience program, is an expert on autism and split-brain patients.

Split brain patients have the connections between the left and right brain hemispheres severed, usually to relieve epilepsy symptoms. The disrupted structure is called the corpus callosum, a bridge consisting of millions of nerve fibers that allows constant exchange of information between the two sides of the brain. The corpus callosum forms during pregnancy and subtle disruptions to the structure are associated with developing autism.

Hutsler, who was not involved in the study, is also very excited by the work.

"We know that brain wiring is altered in autism spectrum disorders and our own work has found similarities in the way visual information is integrated between the two brain hemispheres of split-brain patients and autistic individuals," Hutsler said. "It is therefore very plausible that PRRG4 will be found to play a part in the altered formation of the corpus callosum in individuals with autism."

The journal which published the study, PLOS Genetics, commissioned a perspective on the article because of its significance.

"Understanding the genetic mechanisms underlying the assembly of brain circuits is likely to be essential to the design of new diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies for Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD)," Jimena Berni wrote in the perspective, explaining that the study "links the genetic alterations and neural circuitry development revealing a novel role for the PRRG4 gene as a regulator."

The University of Nevada, Reno study will inspire members of several diverse fields and drive research forward in several ways, including:

Axon (nerve fibers) guidance a range of physical interactors have been identified for PRRG proteins and these provide promising new avenues for investigation in all axon guidance systems.Vertebrate brain development and Human Genetics the PRRG genes are expressed during brain development and in adults, but detailed surveys of expression patterns are lacking. Examination of key midline crossing structures such as the floor plate of the spinal cord and the corpus callosum is an obvious next step, but many other brain structures should be examined.Yeast protein trafficking The findings offer the intriguing possibility that yeast genetics can be used to identify the mechanisms by which Rcr/Comm/PRRG proteins regulate protein trafficking to the cell surface.The PLOS Genetics article is available on the Public Library of Science website.

The research was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The Kidd lab was part of a $10 million Center for Biomedical Research Excellence Project in Cell Biology of Signaling at the University, which is funded by the National Institute of Healths Institute of General Medical Sciences. Kidd is also a fellow in the University's Research and Innovation Office.

Both Jeff Hutsler Kidd are part of the University's Integrative Neuroscience program. In 2010, Hutsler received the Slifka-Ritvo Award for Innovation in Autism Research from International Society for Autism Research.

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Split-brain fruit fly research at UNR gives insight into autism - Northern Nevada Business Weekly