The design of new calcium channels, built bottom-up from scratch, was reported last week in Nature. "Biochemists have been studying ion channels for decades and debating about how they work for almost ...

The cells lining skin capillaries are constantly sending each other messages—tiny pulses of calcium that help regulate blood flow, sense physical forces and keep vessel walls intact. Scientists have ...

Signaling is fundamental to how cells sense and respond to their environment—but in immune cells, those signals must be precisely amplified to mount an effective defense against invasive threats. New ...

The enzyme RNA polymerase II transcribes genes into messenger RNA. This process is guided by modifications to the enzyme's "tail" called phosphorylation patterns. Scientists at St. Jude Children's ...

Acting as armor, a scaffold and a communication platform in one, our cells' plasma membrane lies at the heart of many crucial cellular processes. Traditionally, it has been thought to function through ...

Beyond the potential clinical application, the study sheds new light on T cell biology and how cells are directed towards specific lineages.