276 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 paper presents a geometric model identifying the cell nucleus as a fundamental physical constraint that limits phagocytic engulfment, providing closed-form expressions to quantify how nuclear geometry creates a size- and curvature-independent bottleneck in frustrated phagocytosis.
This paper presents advanced fluorescence-guided cryo-FIB milling workflows that utilize distinct targeting strategies for different object sizes to overcome registration errors and enable the routine, high-precision capture of both large and small cellular structures for cryo-electron tomography.
This study demonstrates that while short-term ex vivo culture of *Plasmodium vivax* reliably preserves global transcriptional profiles and enriches late asexual stages, it introduces a clonal bottleneck that selectively filters specific haplotypes, necessitating explicit modeling of developmental composition and infection complexity when interpreting transcriptomic data.
This study establishes a xeno-free, serum-free culture protocol for the isolation, expansion, and purification of primary human salivary stem/progenitor cells, demonstrating their stability, epithelial purity, and low senescence as a viable platform for future GMP-compliant autologous regenerative therapies for hyposalivation.
This study identifies a posterior non-centrosomal Microtubule-Organizing Center (ncMTOC) in *Drosophila* oocytes, defined by the spectraplakin Short Stop and Patronin, which organizes an acentrosomal microtubule network essential for generating pushing forces that maintain nuclear centering prior to asymmetric migration.
This study demonstrates that physiological levels of 3-hydroxykynurenine induce distinct, concentration-dependent alterations in neuronal mitochondrial morphology and function, suggesting that subtle changes in kynurenine pathway metabolism may contribute to early mitochondrial dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases.
This study demonstrates that in the polymorphic fungus *A. pullulans*, which exhibits a 100-fold cell size range, organelle composition is influenced by cell size, as mitochondria and ER scale proportionally with volume while vacuoles and peroxisomes do not.
The lipid transfer protein ORP3 regulates PI4P and PI(4,5)P2 levels at the plasma membrane during mitosis by transferring PI4P from the membrane to the ER via VAPA-mediated recruitment, a process essential for proper spindle geometry, cytokinesis, and the prevention of genetic instability.
The study reveals that epithelial stretching reduces aPKC activity to trigger the apical accumulation of its low-affinity substrate Yurt, which activates a contractile pathway to homeostatically regulate apical domain size.
This study demonstrates that the ISWI chromatin remodeler, through its Snf2h and Snf2l subunits, is essential for cell fate transitions in muscle and adipose tissues by mediating the recruitment of the cBAF complex and CTCF to lineage-determining transcription factor binding sites, a process critical for de novo chromatin organization during differentiation.