In the evolutionary history of life, the ability of a cell to separate its inner world from the external environment was an ...

Lipids, or fats, are essential to life. They form the membranes around cells, protecting them from the outside. In nature, there is an enormous diversity of lipids, with each organism having its own ...

(Nanowerk News) Drawing inspiration from natural sensory systems, an MIT-led team has designed a novel sensor that could detect the same molecules that naturally occurring cell receptors can identify.

When a virus infects a bacterial cell, the viral genome is the first component to be fully injected into the cell, making it an ideal immune target. A bacterial enzyme anchored to the membrane ...

A study could open new pathways for understanding how cholesterol influences cell membranes and their receptors, paving the way for future research on diseases linked to membrane organization. A new ...

Cell membranes play a crucial role in maintaining the integrity and functionality of cells. However, the mechanisms by which they perform these roles are not yet fully understood. Scientists have used ...

Proteins long known to be essential for hearing have been hiding a talent: they also act as gatekeepers that shuffle fatty molecules across cell membranes. When this newly discovered function goes ...

This fundamental work uncovers an unexpected lysosomal function for NINJ2 and links it to ferroptosis and cancer biology. The evidence supporting the conclusions appears to be convincing. Additional ...

image: An MIT-led team designed a sensor that may be deployed to screen patients for hard-to-diagnose cancers, or metastatic tumors. The device draws inspiration from the membrane that surrounds all ...