416 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 introduces a volumetric fluorescence imaging workflow that calculates depth-dependent attenuation coefficients to quantitatively compare the transparency and staining quality of three CUBIC-based tissue clearing protocols across various murine organs, revealing significant performance differences across protocol-organ combinations.
This paper introduces Fluorescence Anisotropy Structured Illumination Microscopy (FA-SIM), a high-accuracy, low-phototoxicity super-resolution technique that quantitatively maps nanoscale heterogeneity in intracellular viscosity and molecular interactions to reveal the physical regulation of cytoskeletal dynamics and cellular organization.
This study demonstrates that increased interface stress between the plasma membrane and actin barbed ends regulates Arp2/3-branched actin density at the leading edge, enabling cells to drive robust lamellipodial protrusion and spreading in response to high extracellular viscosity even in the absence of extracellular matrix proteins.
This study demonstrates that in INS-1 β-cells, MEF2D overexpression impairs mitochondrial respiration, glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, and cell survival, whereas its knockdown enhances these functions, suggesting MEF2D as a potential therapeutic target for diabetes.
This paper presents a deterministic lateral displacement microfluidic device that successfully overcomes the fragility of mature adipocytes to achieve high-purity, high-recovery size-based separation while preserving cell viability and hormonal responsiveness for metabolic research.
This study demonstrates that in *S. pombe*, the synchronous and irreversible onset of anaphase is driven by rapid securin degradation and limited by molecular noise, rather than relying on the positive feedback mechanisms typically associated with major cell cycle transitions.
This paper introduces Cellquant, a reproducible, text-based command-line pipeline that automates complex image analysis tasks like segmentation and colocalization for quantitative fluorescence microscopy, enabling biologists to rigorously characterize cellular dynamics such as stress granule formation and nucleolar reorganization without requiring programming expertise.
This study elucidates a stepwise mechanism for ULK1 complex recruitment to autophagic membranes, revealing how the ATG13:ATG101 dimer cooperates with WIPI proteins to insert a membrane-binding finger and how a ULK1 PVP motif docks to the complex to position the kinase domain for substrate phosphorylation and autophagy initiation.
This study reveals that in *C. elegans*, the conserved kinase UNC-51 phosphorylates the adaptor UNC-76 to trigger RAB-10-dependent retrograde trafficking of innexin proteins, thereby eliminating transient electrical synapses that are essential for early calcium dynamics and subsequent chemical synapse formation.
This study introduces a synthetic spindle assembly checkpoint (SynSAC) synchronization strategy to compare yeast metaphase I and II, revealing that meiosis II features a stronger SAC response and distinct kinetochore composition and phosphorylation patterns compared to meiosis I.