415 papers
Cell biology is the study of life at its most fundamental unit: the cell. This field explores how these microscopic building blocks function, communicate, and replicate to sustain living organisms, from the simplest bacteria to complex human tissues. By understanding the machinery inside a cell, scientists unlock secrets about growth, disease, and the very nature of existence itself.
At Gist.Science, we track every new preprint uploaded to bioRxiv within this dynamic category. Our team processes each submission to provide both accessible plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries, ensuring you can grasp complex discoveries without getting lost in dense jargon. Below are the latest papers in cell biology, offering a fresh look at the inner workings of life as they are shared with the world.
This study demonstrates that the metabolic composition of culture media serves as a dominant regulator of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte maturation and their susceptibility to ischaemia-reperfusion injury, thereby establishing a critical framework for improving the physiological fidelity of cardiac injury models.
Proteomic analysis of KNL1 in HEK 293T/17 cells treated with microtubule-disrupting agents reveals 111 phosphorylation sites, demonstrating that this outer kinetochore protein is extensively phosphoregulated in response to defective kinetochore-microtubule attachments.
This paper presents a stochastic phase field model demonstrating that cells can effectively sense immobilized ECM gradients (haptotaxis) and maintain robust directional migration even when faced with competing cues or ligand removal, a process where increased directional persistence compensates for reduced bias at the cost of greater cell-to-cell heterogeneity.
This study reveals that culturing human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) under hypoxia induces metabolic reprogramming and a partial cancer stem cell-like phenotype with accelerated proliferation, raising significant safety concerns regarding their clinical application despite their enhanced therapeutic potential.
This study characterizes novel KIF22 variants in human chondrocytes, revealing that heterozygous mutations cause dominant mitotic defects through constitutive activation while the recessive R49Q variant leads to milder, partially penetrant segregation errors via mixed-state dysregulation, thereby expanding the known genotypic and mechanistic landscape of SEMDJL2.
This paper demonstrates that performing a controlled sublimation step within the SEM chamber prior to FIB milling effectively mitigates surface ice and curtaining artifacts in cryo-ET lamella preparation without compromising sample vitrification or structural integrity.
This study demonstrates that canonical autophagy is dispensable for the endosomal-exosomal trafficking of plasma membrane PD-L1, whereas the actin-capping protein CAPZ serves as a critical regulator of this pathway by controlling endosomal maturation and sorting decisions that determine PD-L1 abundance on the cell surface.
This study reveals that c-MYC is an aggregation-prone, amyloidogenic protein whose spontaneous formation of amyloid oligomers induces transcription-independent apoptosis, suggesting a built-in failsafe mechanism that contributes to its paradoxical tumor-suppressing activity.
Using live-imaging of over 150 HCT116 cell lineages, this study reveals that multipolar chromosome segregation in early mitosis is the primary factor limiting post-whole-genome duplication proliferation, with successful lineages either mitigating this risk in one sub-lineage or surviving despite early multipolar events.
This study reveals that gut tumors in *Drosophila* secrete Pvf1 to activate the TORC1-Hnf4 signaling pathway in distal hepatocyte-like oenocytes, reprogramming their lipid metabolism to produce specific fatty acids that fuel tracheal growth and tumor progression, a mechanism conserved in mammals that offers potential therapeutic targets for cancer-associated metabolic disorders.