cellular communication – Quanta Magazine

Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA

Annie Melchor — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 +0000

For a molecule of RNA, the world is a dangerous place. Unlike DNA, which can persist for millions of years in its remarkably stable, double-stranded form, RNA isn’t built to last — not even within the cell that made it. Unless it’s protectively tethered to a larger molecule, RNA can degrade in minutes or less. And outside a cell? Forget about it. Voracious, RNA-destroying enzymes are everywhere...

Source

Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging

Viviane Callier — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 15:08:44 +0000

Aging can seem like an unregulated process: As time marches along, our cells and bodies inevitably accumulate dings and dents that cause dysfunctions, failures and ultimately death. However, in 1993 a discovery upended that interpretation of events. Researchers found a mutation in a single gene that doubled a worm’s life span; subsequent work showed that related genes, all involved in the response...

Source

Cells Blaze Their Own Trails to Navigate Through the Body

Elena Renken — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 17:10:57 +0000

Even when it’s not apparent, cells in our tissues and organs are constantly on the move. In fact, the ability of cells to get where they need to go is essential to our health and survival. Skin cells migrate to heal wounds. Immune system cells migrate to fight infections. “Every day, you look at your body and it’s not changing much,” said Peter Devreotes, a professor of cell biology at the Johns...

Source

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...

Source

‘Social’ Mitochondria, Whispering Between Cells, Influence Health

Katarina Zimmer — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 16:38:59 +0000

During his doctoral research on the ties between aging and mitochondria, Martin Picard frequently saw micrographs of those energy-producing organelles. Yet it wasn’t until fairly late in his graduate work that he first watched sped-up video of mitochondria moving inside live human cells, and the sight came as a revelation. Tagged with fluorescent dye, the mitochondria were neon squiggles crawling...

Source