414 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 lineage-specifying transcription factors directly regulate metabolic gene expression to tune cellular metabolism to specific functional demands, thereby ensuring the coherent execution of specialized cell activities.
This study demonstrates that holotomography serves as a powerful, label-free platform for volumetric imaging and quantitative analysis of fibrillar collagen architecture, enabling the differentiation of collagen subtypes, monitoring of assembly dynamics, and visualization of cell-mediated matrix remodeling without exogenous labels.
This study reveals that ferroptosis in mesenchymal-like ovarian cancer cells is executed through a non-canonical pathway where caspase-5 directly cleaves gasdermin E (GSDME) to induce pore formation and cell death, independent of caspase-1 and gasdermin D.
This study elucidates the conserved and species-specific molecular mechanisms by which Extended Synaptotagmins (E-Syts) maintain plasma membrane integrity under stress, demonstrating that their N-terminal anchor, C2 domains, and SMP domain collectively mediate ER-plasma membrane tethering, structural scaffolding, and the formation of highly curved membrane peaks essential for cellular homeostasis.
This study demonstrates that the inner nuclear membrane voltage and chromatin texture in intact cells are dynamically coupled and highly sensitive to ionic history, where the magnitude and nature of nuclear responses to sodium, potassium, and chloride perturbations depend on both the trajectory of exposure and the pre-existing chromatin state.
This study reveals that in *Drosophila*, GATOR2 maintains GATOR1 in an inactive supercomplex under nutrient-rich conditions, but upon starvation, Wdr59 facilitates the dissociation of this complex, allowing GATOR1 to become GAP-active, inhibit Rag GTPases, and prevent TORC1 recruitment to lysosomes.
This study identifies a non-lytic membrane permeabilization program called erebosis, mediated by the pore-forming protein Ninjurin A (NijA), which drives physiological enterocyte turnover in the Drosophila intestine by allowing transient protein exchange while preserving epithelial barrier integrity.
This study reveals that K-Ras4B regulates primary cilium dynamics in differentiating muscle cells by promoting ciliogenesis through PDE6D-mediated ciliary localization, while its AMPK-PKG2-dependent phosphorylation inhibits this interaction to facilitate differentiation.
This study establishes that pathogenic PTCD1 variants cause infantile cardiomyopathy by disrupting mitoribosome biogenesis, which leads to toxic mitochondrial protein aggregation and network remodeling in post-mitotic tissues.
This study utilizes high-resolution spatial and single-cell transcriptomics to map the full-thickness human endometrium, revealing that menstrual breakdown and regeneration occur concurrently through a coordinated basalis-to-luminal gradient driven by a distinct, long-lived progenitor niche.