22 May 2013 Keeping in Shape Stretch your skin and it springs back to shape – a property also possessed by the lining of your throat, inner ear, blood vessels and many other body parts. This springy tension is due to each surface cell having a tiny belt, formed by the proteins myosin and actin, wrapped around it, rather like an elastic band. Scientists have discovered that these belts are interlinked so that their stretching and squeezing actions spread like waves through the millions of cells, controlling the shape and movement of the surface (epithelial) tissue. Pictured (bottom) is a normal arrangement of surface cells of a rat’s intestine, with actin stained red and cell boundaries green. When myosin is chemically deactivated, the protein belts stop working, causing the cells to drift apart (top). Written by Mick Warwicker — Hirofumi Sakaguchi, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Japan Bechara Kachar, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, NIH, USA Copyright Elsevier 2013 Published in Current Biology 23(8): 731-736
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22 May 2013

Keeping in Shape

Stretch your skin and it springs back to shape – a property also possessed by the lining of your throat, inner ear, blood vessels and many other body parts. This springy tension is due to each surface cell having a tiny belt, formed by the proteins myosin and actin, wrapped around it, rather like an elastic band. Scientists have discovered that these belts are interlinked so that their stretching and squeezing actions spread like waves through the millions of cells, controlling the shape and movement of the surface (epithelial) tissue. Pictured (bottom) is a normal arrangement of surface cells of a rat’s intestine, with actin stained red and cell boundaries green. When myosin is chemically deactivated, the protein belts stop working, causing the cells to drift apart (top).

Written by Mick Warwicker

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Published in Current Biology 23(8): 731-736

Source: bpod.mrc.ac.uk

Neglected Hide-and-Seek Sneaking into our bodies is only the first step for parasites. They must then evade the numerous defence mechanisms that seek to destroy them. But if they can find a safe haven to multiply in, before launching a full-scale attack, they can increase their chances of success. And where better to do this than in the very white blood cells that are hunting them? Normally this strategy would end in certain destruction, but parasites containing Chagas disease possess a protein that disrupts white blood cells’ normal defences. This image shows that normal response, as an alarm molecule (stained green and yellow) moves from the main white blood cell body into the control centre called the nucleus (stained red), where it triggers the immune response. It’s the ability to block this process that allows the parasites to establish the disease, which infects about 10 million people throughout Latin America annually. Written by Jan Piotrowski — Patricia Doyle University of California, San Francisco, USA Image originally published under Creative Commons Attribution License Published in PLOS Pathogens 7(9): e1002139
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Neglected Hide-and-Seek

Sneaking into our bodies is only the first step for parasites. They must then evade the numerous defence mechanisms that seek to destroy them. But if they can find a safe haven to multiply in, before launching a full-scale attack, they can increase their chances of success. And where better to do this than in the very white blood cells that are hunting them? Normally this strategy would end in certain destruction, but parasites containing Chagas disease possess a protein that disrupts white blood cells’ normal defences. This image shows that normal response, as an alarm molecule (stained green and yellow) moves from the main white blood cell body into the control centre called the nucleus (stained red), where it triggers the immune response. It’s the ability to block this process that allows the parasites to establish the disease, which infects about 10 million people throughout Latin America annually.

Written by Jan Piotrowski

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Source: bpod.mrc.ac.uk