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 study demonstrates that endogenous cell competition acts as a genome quality-control mechanism in zebrafish to eliminate pathogenic de novo mutant cells during development, but this protective surveillance is compromised under pH stress, leading to the persistence of harmful mutations and subsequent tissue defects.
This study introduces a genetic model in the short-lived African turquoise killifish to demonstrate that brain macrophages, particularly those resembling mammalian border-associated and monocyte-derived subsets, are responsible for clearing extracellular substrates but lose this engulfment capacity with age, offering a new platform for developing therapies against neurodegenerative diseases.
The paper identifies a new class of BAG2-driven, phase-separated organelles called Immune-Protein Degradation Bodies (I-PDBs) that link protein quality control to adaptive immunity by redirecting aggregated proteins to specialized sites for degradation and antigenic peptide generation, a mechanism termed the Proteostasis-Associated Immune Relay (PAIR).
This paper presents a rapid and cost-effective method for creating ~100 nm antibody-binding compensation beads to address the current lack of commercial options for nanoscale flow cytometry.
This paper describes a chemical biology strategy that uses synthetic lipid analogs with programmable tail structures to selectively manipulate, produce, and bioorthogonally label specific lipid classes within living mammalian cells without genetic or enzymatic intervention.
CD47 blockade promotes the resolution of atherosclerosis by qualitatively reprogramming the myeloid landscape, specifically by suppressing inflammatory monocyte recruitment while simultaneously enriching macrophage subsets with enhanced efferocytic capacity to clear apoptotic cells.
The RNA helicase Aquarius (AQR) maintains pluripotent stem cell identity by safeguarding a resilient replication program that resolves transcription-replication conflicts and R-loops, thereby preventing transcriptional instability and the loss of cell identity.
By comparing cell cultures of the Antarctic plunderfish and a temperate shanny, researchers discovered that while basic subcellular organization and organelle dynamics are conserved in extreme cold, Antarctic fish exhibit specific morphological adaptations in lysosomes and mitochondria that may relate to their unique biological challenges.
By characterizing a series of *pcyt-1* mutant alleles in *C. elegans*, this study demonstrates that graded reductions in phosphatidylcholine synthesis trigger compensatory lipid remodeling toward long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids and cause specific physiological vulnerabilities, particularly in the germline, without activating canonical cellular stress pathways.
This study demonstrates that the combination of cellular senescence and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) creates a dysfunctional antiviral state in lung fibroblasts, characterized by altered interferon responses and reduced reliance on key transcription factors like IRF3 and STAT1, which explains the heightened susceptibility of IPF patients to viral infections and acute exacerbations.