gene regulation – Quanta Magazine

A ‘Lobby’ Where a Molecule Mob Tells Genes What to Do

Philip Ball — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 15:47:52 +0000

The discovery during the Human Genome Project in the early 2000s that we humans have only about 20,000 protein-coding genes — about as many as the tiny soil-dwelling nematode worm, and less than half as many as the rice plant — came as a shock. That blow to our pride was softened, though, by the idea that the human genome is rich in regulatory connections. Our genes interact in a dense network...

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Embryo Cells Set Patterns for Growth by Pushing and Pulling

Monique Brouillette — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 14:08:12 +0000

One of the longest-standing questions in biology is how a living thing that starts as an embryonic blob of uniform cells morphs over time into an organism with diverse tissues, each with its own unique pattern and characteristics. The answer would explain how a leopard gets its spots, a zebra gets its stripes, trees get their branches and many more mysteries of pattern development in biology.

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Simple Gene Circuits Hint at How Stem Cells Find New Identities

Veronique Greenwood — Thu, 19 May 2022 14:02:40 +0000

The human body contains more than 200 types of cells by most estimates, all descended from a single fertilized egg. The spindly cells of the skin, the gangly branching neurons, the plump fat cells, the exquisitely sensitive rods and cones of the eye — all of these are products of a long process of development, during which their physical forms altered beyond recognition. With few exceptions...

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The Year in Biology

John Rennie — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 15:56:21 +0000

Three and a half billion years of evolution have given life on Earth plenty of time to explore the margins of what’s possible, so biological science has a lot of catching up to do. Biologists have identified some fundamental principles and mechanisms that govern their field, like natural selection, the cellular nature of organisms and the central dogma of molecular biology. They have toiled to...

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Biologists Rethink the Logic Behind Cells’ Molecular Signals

Philip Ball — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 15:33:32 +0000

Back in 2000, when Michael Elowitz of the California Institute of Technology was still a grad student at Princeton University, he accomplished a remarkable feat in the young field of synthetic biology: He became one of the first to design and demonstrate a kind of functioning “circuit” in living cells. He and his mentor, Stanislas Leibler, inserted a suite of genes into Escherichia coli bacteria...

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