Category: Cells

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Cool Video: How a Microtubule Builds and Deconstructs

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A microtubule, part of the cell’s skeleton, builds and deconstructs. Credit: Eva Nogales lab, University of California, Berkeley.

In this animation, tubulin proteins snap into place like Lego blocks to build a microtubule, part of the cell’s skeleton. When construction ends, this long hollow cylinder falls to pieces from its top end. The breakdown is critical for many basic biological processes, including cell division, when rapidly shortening microtubules pull chromosomes into each daughter cell.

Until recently, scientists didn’t know exactly what drove microtubules to fall apart. A research team led by Eva Nogales of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, now has an explanation.

Using high-powered microscopy, the scientists peered into the structure of a microtubule and found how a chemical reaction puts the stacking tubulin proteins under intense strain. The only thing keeping the proteins from springing apart is the pressure from the addition of more tubulin. So when assembly stops, the microtubule deconstructs.

The team also learned that Taxol, a common cancer drug, relieves this tension and allows microtubules to remain intact indefinitely. With microtubules frozen in place, a cancer cell cannot divide and eventually dies.

Because of this research, scientists now better understand both the success behind a common cancer drug and the molecular basis underlying the workings of microtubules.

Learn more:
University of California, Berkeley News Release
Nogales Lab

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Revealing a Key Player in Cancer Metastasis

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Invadopodia
A newly designed fluorescent biosensor shows where Rac1, a molecule involved in cancer metastasis, is active in this cell. Warmer colors show greater Rac1 activity. Credit: Yasmin Moshfegh, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Most of the more than half-a-million deaths caused by cancer each year in the United States result not from the original tumor but from the spread of cancer to new parts of the body, or metastasis. Cancer cells travel from a primary tumor using invadopodia, foot-like protrusions that break through surrounding connective tissue. Invadopodia are driven by protein filaments that repeatedly grow and disassemble. Exactly what guides this cycle was unclear, but scientists suspected a molecule called Rac1 might be involved. A new tool now sheds light on the details.

Researchers led by Louis Hodgson of Albert Einstein College of Medicine developed a fluorescent biosensor that glows wherever Rac1 is active in a cell, and they used it to study highly invasive breast cancer cells taken from rodents and humans. The scientists observed invadopodia form when Rac1 activity was low and disappear when it was high. They then confirmed their findings when they shut down the gene that encodes Rac1 and saw the invadopodia remain intact indefinitely.

This discovery suggests that targeting Rac1 activity with drugs could stop the spread of cancer cells. But a major hurdle remains: Healthy cells, including those that make up our immune system, also rely on the molecule for normal activity. Researchers must find a way to turn off Rac1 in cancer cells without disrupting its function in the rest of the body.

This work also was funded by NIH’s National Cancer Institute.

Learn more:
Albert Einstein College of Medicine News Release

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An Insider’s Look at Life: Magnified, an Airport Exhibit of Stunning Microscopy Images

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Bubonic plague bacteria on part of the digestive system in a rat flea
What looks like pollen on petals is actually bubonic plague bacteria on the digestive spines of a flea, viewed through a powerful microscope. Credit: B. Joseph Hinnebusch, Elizabeth Fischer and Austin Athman, NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Science. Art. Airports. I’ve never used those three words together before. But I’ve been doing it a lot lately while working on Life: Magnified, an exhibit of 46 striking scientific images created by scientists around the country using state-of-the-art microscopes.

The show is at Washington Dulles International Airport, where more than a million travelers will see it over its 6-month run. As our director said in a recent post on another NIGMS blog, “What a great way to share the complexity and beauty of biomedical science with such a large public audience!”

We’ve also set up an online gallery, where the colorful images can be viewed and freely downloaded for research, educational and news media purposes.

The project itself was quite an adventure. When we asked scientists to send us images, our fears of not getting enough attractive, high-resolution options were drowned by a deluge of more than 600 submissions. Then we worried how to sort through them all and make final selections. Doing so required several rounds of online viewing, various ranking systems and a panel of experts. Then the images were printed as large, digital negatives on transparency film.

Artist's rendition of a network diagram. Credit: Allison Kudla, Institute for Systems Biology.
The midnight installation of Life: Magnified involved five people (that’s me in pink), a ladder and lots of rags and glass cleaner. Credit: Woody Machalek.

Dulles is a pretty busy place, so we set up the exhibit when it was quietest—the middle of the night (10 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., to be exact). We swapped out images from the previous photography exhibit and installed the Life: Magnified ones in LED lightboxes mounted in the airport’s Gateway Gallery. It was an eerie and exhilarating feeling to be in a noiseless, nearly empty airport without heavy bags and a long walk to a departure gate.

Less than 12 hours later, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from someone who had passed through the exhibit and sent a few photos. He called the images “stunning.” Similar sentiments were expressed by Science, NBC News online Exit icon, The Atlantic Exit icon, The Washington Post Exit icon, National Geographic Exit icon and other publications.

Now I’m being asked about next steps, including whether the exhibit will travel. We’re investigating a variety of options. For now, I hope you’re able to see the exhibit in person. If not, take a look at the images online and see which ones you enjoy most.

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Cool Image: Researching Regeneration in a Model Organism

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The isolated feeding tube of a flatworm.

The feeding tube, or pharynx, of a planarian worm with cilia shown in red and muscle fibers shown in green. Credit: Carrie Adler/Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

This rainbow-hued image shows the isolated feeding tube, or pharynx, of a tiny freshwater flatworm called a planarian, with the hairlike cilia in red and muscle fibers in green. Scientists use these wondrous worms, which have an almost infinite capacity to regrow all organs, as a simple model system for studying regeneration. A research team led by Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research exploited a method known as selective chemical amputation to remove the pharynx easily and reliably. This allowed the team to conduct a large-scale genetic analysis of how stem cells in a planaria fragment realize what’s missing and then restore it. The researchers initially identified about 350 genes that were activated as a result of amputation. They then suppressed those genes one by one and observed the worms until they pinpointed one gene in particular—a master regulator called FoxA—whose absence completely blocked pharynx regeneration. Scientists believe that researching regeneration in flatworms first is a good way to gain knowledge that could one day be applied to promoting regeneration in mammals.

Learn more:
Stowers Institute News Release
Sánchez Lab

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The Inner Life of Nerve Cells

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“Before this research, we didn’t even know that neurons had this special mechanism to control neuropeptide function. This is why we do basic research. This is why it’s important to understand how neurons work, down to the subcellular and molecular levels.”—Kenneth Miller”

Nerve cells (neurons) in the brain use small molecules called neuropeptides to converse with each other. Disruption of this communication can lead to problems with learning, memory and other brain functions. Through genetic studies in a model organism, the tiny worm C. elegans, a team led by Kenneth Miller of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation has uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that nerve cells use to package, move and release neuropeptides. The researchers found that a protein called CaM kinase II, which plays many roles in the brain, helps control this mechanism. Neuropeptides in worms lacking CaM kinase II spilled out from their packages before they reached their proper destinations. A more thorough understanding of how neurons work, provided by studies like this, may help researchers better target drugs to treat memory disorders and other neurological problems in humans.

This work also was funded by NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health.

Learn more:
Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation News Release Exit icon

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How Cells Take Out the Trash

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Proteins entering the proteasome. Credit: Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.
When proteins enter the proteasome, they’re chopped into bits for re-use. Credit: Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

As people around the world mark Earth Day (April 22) with activities that protect the planet, our cells are busy safeguarding their own environment.

To keep themselves neat, tidy and above all healthy, cells rely on a variety of recycling and trash removal systems. If it weren’t for these systems, cells could look like microscopic junkyards—and worse, they might not function properly. Scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health are therefore working to understand the cell’s janitorial services to find ways to combat malfunctions.

Read more about how cells take out the trash and handle recycling in this Inside Life Science article.

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New Life for Toxic Antibiotics?

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Pills and a bottle
Researchers found that the antibiotic trovafloxacin cuts off a channel for communication between cells and interferes with a cell-death process. Credit: Stock image.

Many compounds that show promise as new antibiotics for treating bacterial infections never make it to the clinic because they turn out to be toxic to humans as well as to bacteria. A research team led by Kodi Ravichandran of the University of Virginia recently gained insights into why one such antibiotic, trovafloxacin, harms human cells. They found that the compound cuts off a channel for communication between cells, which in turn interferes with how dying cells are broken down and recycled by the body. Roughly 200 billion cells in the human body die and are replaced every day as part of a routine cleanup process, and interference in this process by trovafloxacin may have contributed to the serious liver damage seen in some patients in clinical trials of the drug. Understanding how trovafloxacin causes toxicity in people may help researchers re-engineer this and related compounds to make them safe and effective for use in fighting bacterial infections.

Learn more:
Ravichandran Lab

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Bleach vs. Bacteria

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Screenshot of the video showing how chlorine affects a bacterial protein. Exposure to hypochlorous acid causes bacterial proteins to unfold and stick to one another, leading to cell death. Credit: Video segment courtesy of the American Chemistry Council. View video

Spring cleaning often involves chlorine bleach, which has been used as a disinfectant for hundreds of years. But our bodies have been using bleach’s active component, hypochlorous acid, to help clean house for millennia. As part of our natural response to infection, certain types of immune cells produce hypochlorous acid to help kill invading microbes, including bacteria.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have made strides in understanding exactly how bleach kills bacteria—and how bacteria’s own defenses can protect against the cellular stress caused by bleach. The insights gained may lead to the development of new drugs to breach these microbial defenses, helping our bodies fight disease.

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What Students Want to Know About Cells

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Cell Day 2014

During a live online chat dubbed “Cell Day,” scientists at NIGMS recently fielded questions about the cell and careers in research from middle and high school students across the country. Here’s a sampling of the questions and answers, some of which have been edited for clarity or length.

What color are cells?
While cells with lots of iron, like red blood cells, may be red, usually cells are colorless.

How many different types of cells can be found inside the human body?
There are about 200 cell types and a few trillion total cells in the human body. That does not include bacteria, fungi and mites that live on the body.

Is it possible to have too many or not enough cells?
The answer depends on cell type. For example, within the immune system, there are many examples of diseases that are caused by too many or not enough cells. When too many immune cells accumulate, patients get very large spleens and lymph nodes. When too few immune cells develop, patients have difficulty fighting infections.

How fast does it take for a cell to produce two daughter cells?
Some cells, for example bacterial ones, can produce daughter cells very fast when nutrients are available. The doubling time for E. coli bacteria is 20 minutes. Other cells in the human body take hours or days or even years to divide.

Do skin cells stretch or multiply when you gain weight?
The size of cells is tightly regulated and maintained so they do not stretch much. As the surface area of the body increases with weight gain, the number of skin cells increases.

Why do cells self-destruct?
The term for cellular self-destruction is “apoptosis” or “programmed cell death.” Apoptosis is very important for normal development of humans and other animals as it ensures that we do not have too many cells and that “unhealthy” cells can be eliminated without causing harm to the surrounding cells. For instance, did you know that human embryos have webbing between their fingers and toes (just like ducks!)? Apoptosis eliminates the cells that form the web so that you are born with toes and fingers.

In what field is there a need for new scientists?
I would say that there is a need for scientists who can work at the interface between the biological and biomedical sciences and the data sciences. Knowing sophisticated mathematics and having computer skills to address questions like ‘what does this biomedical data tell us about particular diseases’ is still a challenge.

What is a scientist’s daily work day like? Is all of your time spent in a lab testing or like in an office throwing ideas around?
There are lots of different kinds of jobs a scientist can have. Many work in labs where they get to do experiments AND throw ideas around. Working in a lab is a lot of fun—you learn things about the world that no one has known before (how cool is that?). Other important jobs that scientists can do include writing about science as a journalist, helping other scientists patent new technologies they invent as a patent agent or lawyer, or working on important scientific policy issues for the government or other organizations.

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Cool Image: Lighting up Brain Cells

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Neurons activated with red or blue light.

Neurons activated with red or blue light using algae-derived opsins. Credit: Yasunobu Murata/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.

The nerve cells, or neurons, lit up in blue and red in this image of mouse brain tissue are expressing algae-derived, light-sensitive proteins called opsins. To control neurons with light, scientists engineer the cells to produce particular opsins, most of which respond to light in the blue-green range. Then they shine light on the cell to activate it. Now, a team of researchers led by Ed Boyden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Gane Ka-Shu Wong of the University of Alberta has discovered an opsin that responds to red light preferentially, enabling them to manipulate two groups of neurons simultaneously with different colors of light and get a more comprehensive look at how those two sets of brain cells interact. Other opsins have shown potential for vision restoration in animal studies, and, because red light causes less damage to tissue than blue-green light, this new opsin might eventually be used for such treatments in humans.

Learn more:
MIT News Release Exit icon