Cell
Doubling the Dictionary of Protein Modification
A cell is full of language. There’s the four-letter code of DNA, the slightly different four-letter dialect of RNA, and the three-letter words that direct the construction of proteins, which are built out of an alphabet of 20 amino acids. In recent years, scientists have slowly revealed another vocabulary superimposed on top of this language, […]
Halting Cancer’s Evolution with Synthetic Lethality
In nature, species evolve thanks to those lucky organisms who cheat death. An environmental pressure may come in and kill of a high percentage of critters, but those critters who survive the bloodbath live on to spread their genes. When this bottle-necking occurs in disease-causing bacteria, we call it drug resistance: an antibiotic may knock […]
A Wider Net for Catching Proteins
Most people who have spent any length of time in a laboratory know the pain and frustration of Western blots. There’s probably a little bit of PTSD in every cell biologist related to gels falling apart, leaky electrophoresis chambers, or bands that should be there but aren’t, causing you to wonder which of the preceding […]
Making Post-Genetic Errors to Protect Proteins
Picture a boxing match, Tao Pan said. A cell, facing viral or bacterial invasion, starts building new proteins, while the infection generates dangerous reactive oxygen species that rampage through the cell causing serious damage. When the new proteins meet the reactive oxygen species (ROS), they face off like welterweights circling each other in the ring […]
Nobel Week So Far
The University hasn’t directly won any of the first two Nobel Prizes awarded this week, but one of today’s winners has a UChicago connection: George E. Smith, one of three scientists who will share the $1.4 million prize in physics, received his doctorate at the University of Chicago 50 years ago in 1959. And Monday’s […]
From Cancer Villain to B-Cell Hero
In each cell of the body is a busy factory, containing all of the elements needed for that cell to develop and perform its unique function. A neuron sprouts a long extension and develops the ability to conduct electrical impulses. A liver cell secretes bile and can absorb toxic substances to neutralize them. Muscle cells […]
“The Inner Life of the Cell”
By Jeremy Manier Kenneth Miller gave a typically captivating talk at the AAAS meeting yesterday in which he showed an eye-popping video illustrating what goes on in our cells all the time. Ken was kind enough to send us a link to the full library of videos, by the BioVisions group at Harvard University. Here’s a YouTube video […]
