361 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 highly metastatic MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells respond to CXCL12 gradients in 3D collagen matrices with directed migration that is significantly influenced by cell morphology, particularly in denser matrices.
This study reveals that human naive CD4 T cell aging is driven by a transcriptional "overmaturation" trajectory, where age-associated changes exaggerate normal post-thymic maturation programs, leading to functional decline and immunosenescence.
This paper introduces the High-throughput Mitochondrial Imaging Platform (H-MIP), a scalable system combining automated imaging and deep learning analysis that enables rapid, unbiased characterization of mitochondrial morphology in tens of thousands of cells, successfully revealing mitochondrial elongation during vascular calcification and demonstrating its potential to accelerate therapeutic discovery.
This paper introduces novel in vitro assays and modeling to systematically characterize how actin-binding proteins regulate actin turnover, revealing optimal conditions for efficiency and demonstrating that rapid turnover is maintained in cell-sized vesicles under physiologically relevant conditions.
This study utilizes proteogenomic profiling to define a distinct endogenous p16INK4a-associated senescence signature in the human ovary, revealing specific gene and protein changes related to cellular senescence and the extracellular matrix that may link natural ovarian aging to age-associated diseases like cancer.
This study identifies the uncharacterized protein SKT as a mechanosensitive rheostat that recruits mTORC2 to cell-matrix adhesions to regulate glycolytic flux and adhesion dynamics, thereby linking extracellular matrix stiffness to metabolic adaptation and tumor progression in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
Using Drosophila nephrocytes to overcome mammalian redundancy, this study revises the linear model of endosome maturation by demonstrating that it is driven by a network of multiple, parallel, and partially compensatory SNARE complexes centered on Snap29, rather than a single ordered pathway.
This paper presents adaptations to the open-source OpenFlexure Microscope—including environmental hardening for humid incubators, thermal and vibration mitigation, and a simplified local GUI—that enable affordable, high-quality live-cell imaging for researchers in resource-constrained settings, as validated by a 48-hour breast cancer drug treatment study.
This study reveals that in *C. elegans*, motor neurons bidirectionally regulate longevity by temporally switching acetylcholine signaling to the gut, utilizing ACR-6 receptors in early life to shorten lifespan and GAR-3 receptors in mid-late life to extend it.
The study introduces the REFLEX system combined with HUNTERuni-seq to identify perivascular angiogenic macrophages (PVAMs) as the critical, physically contacting source of VEGF-A that maintains cardiac vascular integrity and function during pressure overload, challenging the conventional view that cardiomyocytes are the primary producers of this signaling molecule.