An electron microscopy study revealed key details of actin filaments, which are essential structural elements of cells and muscles. Actin filaments -- protein structures critical to living movement ...

Researchers have visualized at the molecular level how formins bind to the ends of actin filaments. This allowed them to uncover how formins mediate the addition of new actin molecules to a growing ...

The discovery opens the door to healthier aging in humans. The cytoskeleton provides most cells with their shape, structure, and internal organization. In turn, the cytoskeleton relies on a type of ...

Cells in the human body are made to move. They assemble during embryo development, migrate to repair tissue, hunt pathogens, and perform a host of other tasks requiring travel. As part of the ...

Some cells, such as immune cells, are highly mobile—they constantly remodel their shape, migrate toward a wound that needs to be closed or chase down bacteria in the bloodstream. This mobility is ...

A Northwestern Medicine study has shed light on one of the most intricate construction projects in biology: how cells build and coordinate the internal scaffolding needed to create a healthy egg. The ...

Understanding how microscopic interactions between proteins in cells produce large-scale organization and asymmetry is a fundamental question in cell biology. In a recent study, researchers from Japan ...

Living cells are highly organized, yet they are not assembled using rigid blueprints or by following a predetermined plan. Instead, order emerges on its own from countless interactions between ...

Actin filaments - protein structures critical to living movement from single cells to animals - have long been known to have polarity associated with their physical characteristics, with growing ...

Formins are made of two identical parts (red, orange) that encircle the actin (grey) filament in a ring-like conformation. “Our discovery allows us to interpret decades of biochemical studies on ...