The primary cilium serves as a “cellular GPS” in wound repair and beyond
Soren Tvorup Christensen
University of Copenhagen
If cells held high school reunions, the primary cilium would be the class nerd who comes back in glory as a bioscience millionaire. Once written off as a vestigial organelle left in the evolutionary dust, the primary cilium has in the last decade risen to prominence as a vital cellular sensor at the root of everything from polycystic kidney disease to cancer to left–right anatomical abnormalities. Now comes evidence that the primary cilium may act as a “cellular GPS,” orienting cells that play a critical role in wound healing to move in the right direction.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Christensen.pdf
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Exploiting a cancer’s addiction
Researchers may have found a new way to slam the brakes on deadly ovarian cancer
Tulsiram Prathapam
University of California, Berkeley
Ovarian cancer cells are “addicted” to a family of proteins produced by a notorious oncogene, MYC, say cell biology researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Blocking these oncoproteins shuts down cell proliferation in the deadliest cancer of the female reproductive system. On the basis of work in cultured human ovarian cancer cells, Tulsiram Prathapam, G. Steven Martin, and colleagues believe that their success with Myc protein inhibition could open a new therapeutic approach to a gynecological cancer that has lagged substantially behind treatment advances for other types.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Prathapam.pdf
Tulsiram Prathapam
University of California, Berkeley
Ovarian cancer cells are “addicted” to a family of proteins produced by a notorious oncogene, MYC, say cell biology researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Blocking these oncoproteins shuts down cell proliferation in the deadliest cancer of the female reproductive system. On the basis of work in cultured human ovarian cancer cells, Tulsiram Prathapam, G. Steven Martin, and colleagues believe that their success with Myc protein inhibition could open a new therapeutic approach to a gynecological cancer that has lagged substantially behind treatment advances for other types.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Prathapam.pdf
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Resolving the blind spot
Seeing the unseen with super-resolution fluorescence microscopy
Bo Huang
Harvard University
On the cellular scale, life gets interesting below 200–300 nm. That’s the length scale of most intracellular structures and the level at which the cell carries out most of its work. Unfortunately, it’s a blind spot for conventional light microscopes. Even when using fluorescent-tagged molecules, light microscopes cannot resolve two objects closer than half the wavelength of the light because of the phenomenon called diffraction. Their images look blurry and overlap no matter how high the magnification. This resolution limit is like the fat man wearing a tall hat in the movie seat in front of you. He’s blocking the best part of the picture. Now comes a new “super-resolution” fluorescence microscopy technique that may at least get the fat man to remove his hat.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Huang.pdf
Bo Huang
Harvard University
On the cellular scale, life gets interesting below 200–300 nm. That’s the length scale of most intracellular structures and the level at which the cell carries out most of its work. Unfortunately, it’s a blind spot for conventional light microscopes. Even when using fluorescent-tagged molecules, light microscopes cannot resolve two objects closer than half the wavelength of the light because of the phenomenon called diffraction. Their images look blurry and overlap no matter how high the magnification. This resolution limit is like the fat man wearing a tall hat in the movie seat in front of you. He’s blocking the best part of the picture. Now comes a new “super-resolution” fluorescence microscopy technique that may at least get the fat man to remove his hat.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Huang.pdf
A small tumor is a large place
Throwing a “photoswitch” on cancer cells lights up the microenvironment and shows how tumor cells are guided toward a blood vessel
Bojana Gligorijevic
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
The Bronx
Small tumors are like minor surgery: If it’s your surgery, it’s not minor. If it’s your tumor, it’s not small. But increasingly, biologists are discovering that even a small tumor can be a large place and that a cell’s location⎯its microenvironment⎯within a tumor can decide its fate. That’s because cells are always signaling to each other, and figuring out what individual tumor cells are saying could tell researchers how to break up the cancer conversation.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Gilgorijevic.pdf
Bojana Gligorijevic
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
The Bronx
Small tumors are like minor surgery: If it’s your surgery, it’s not minor. If it’s your tumor, it’s not small. But increasingly, biologists are discovering that even a small tumor can be a large place and that a cell’s location⎯its microenvironment⎯within a tumor can decide its fate. That’s because cells are always signaling to each other, and figuring out what individual tumor cells are saying could tell researchers how to break up the cancer conversation.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Gilgorijevic.pdf
Lipids and longevity
Yeast yield secrets of old age: Eat less and process lipids well when young
Vladimir Titorenko
Concordia University, Montreal
After leavening bread and brewing beer, the third most interesting use of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae may be in laboratories studying the age-old question, what is old age? Is old age the final stage of a developmental program or merely the result of a lifelong accumulation of unrepaired cellular and molecular damage? Studying baker's yeast as a model for the mechanism of cellular aging, Vladimir Titorenko of Concordia University in Montreal sees aging as a little of both.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Titorenko.pdf
Vladimir Titorenko
Concordia University, Montreal
After leavening bread and brewing beer, the third most interesting use of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae may be in laboratories studying the age-old question, what is old age? Is old age the final stage of a developmental program or merely the result of a lifelong accumulation of unrepaired cellular and molecular damage? Studying baker's yeast as a model for the mechanism of cellular aging, Vladimir Titorenko of Concordia University in Montreal sees aging as a little of both.
TO READ MORE, GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Titorenko.pdf
From geobiology to cystic fibrosis
Probing the evolutionary roots of ancient bacteria may open a new line of attack on the leading cause of death in cystic fibrosis: opportunistic infection
Lars Dietrich
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The agony and the ecstasy of basic research is that wherever you begin, you never know where you’ll end up. Consider the Massachusetts Institute of Technology laboratory of geobiologist Dianne K. Newman, which focuses on how ancestral bacteria on the early earth evolved the ability to metabolize minerals. What might seem a purely academic question led Newman and postdoctoral fellow Lars Dietrich to new insights into the leading cause of death among the 30,000 Americans with cystic fibrosis (CF). TO READ MORE GO TO:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Dietrich.pdf
The virus beneath the skin
Genital tissue no foolproof barrier to sexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus
Thomas Hope
Department of Cell and Molecular Biology
Northwestern University Medical School
The rise of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission through heterosexual sex has researchers scrambling for new vaccines and microbicides to block its spread, but findings by researchers at the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago challenge a widely held assumption that the normal mucosal lining of the female genital tract is an effective barrier to viral penetration. TO READ MORE....Go to:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Hope.pdf
Thomas Hope
Department of Cell and Molecular Biology
Northwestern University Medical School
The rise of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission through heterosexual sex has researchers scrambling for new vaccines and microbicides to block its spread, but findings by researchers at the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago challenge a widely held assumption that the normal mucosal lining of the female genital tract is an effective barrier to viral penetration. TO READ MORE....Go to:
https://www.ascb.org/ascbsec/press/embargo/ASCB-pressbook08_Hope.pdf
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