News by Subject Biology

Bats carry many viruses, including COVID-19, without becoming ill. Biologists at the University of Rochester are studying the immune system of bats to find potential ways to "mimic" that system in humans.

In a recent study of genes involved in brain functioning, their previously unknown features have been uncovered by bioinformaticians from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Institute of Mathematical Problems of Biology, RAS.

Damaged mitochondria are selectively eliminated via autophagy (called mitophagy). Parkin and PINK1, proteins mutated in hereditary Parkinson's disease, amplify ubiquitin signals on damaged mitochondria with the subsequent activation of autophagic machinery. Researchers in the Ubiquitin Project of Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science (TMIMS) discovered that the critical autophagy adaptor OPTN (optineurin) interacts with ATG9A, and this interaction plays a critical role in PINK1/Parkin-mediated mitophagy. These studies were published in Journal of Cell Biology.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered that breast cancer cells can alter the function of immune cells known as Natural killer (NK) cells so that instead of killing the cancer cells, they facilitate their spread to other parts of the body. The study, which will be published July 9 in the Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), suggests that preventing this reprogramming might stop breast cancer from metastasizing to other tissues, a major cause of death in breast cancer patients.

Scientists from the University of Liverpool have revealed new insight into how cyanobacteria construct the organelles that are essential for their ability to photosynthesise.

The discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP), which is made by a jellyfish, transformed cell biology. It allowed scientists to stitch the GFP sequence to proteins from other organisms to trace their movements and interactions in living cells. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have designed peptide nanoparticles that can each glow in a variety of colors, opening the door for many new biomedical applications.

Duke researchers have made the first time-lapse movies of the sheet-like mesh that surrounds and supports most animal tissues. While the thin layer of extracellular matrix known as the basement membrane plays key roles in development and disease, visualizing it in living organisms has been difficult to do. The team says their work offers a new way to study basement membrane defects underlying aging, and diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes.