Why did life forms first begin to get larger and what advantage did this increase in size provide? UCLA biologists working with an international team of scientists examined the earliest communities of large multicellular organisms in the fossil record to help answer this question. (more…)
Cheating is a behavior not limited to humans, animals and plants. Even microscopically small, single-celled algae do it, a team of UA researchers has discovered.
Humans do it, chimpanzees do it, cuckoos do it – cheating to score a free ride is a well-documented behavior by many animals, even plants. But microscopically small, single-celled algae? Yes, they do it too, biologists with the University of Arizona’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology have discovered.
“There are cheaters out there that we didn’t know of,” said William Driscoll, lead author of a research report on the topic who studied an environmentally devastating toxic alga that is invading U.S. waters as part of his doctoral research in the lab of Jeremiah Hackett, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. (more…)
In a study that holds major implications for breast cancer research as well as basic cell biology, scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a rotational motion that plays a critical role in the ability of breast cells to form the spherical structures in the mammary gland known as acini. This rotation, which the researchers call “CAMo,” for coherent angular motion, is necessary for the cells to form spheres. Without CAMo, the cells do not form spheres, which can lead to random motion, loss of structure and malignancy.
”What is most exciting to me about this stunning discovery is that it may finally give us a handle by which to discover the physical laws of cellular motion as they apply to biology,” says Mina Bissell, a leading authority on breast cancer and Distinguished Scientist with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. (more…)
*Cells at the tip of the slime mold’s fruiting body organize into an epithelial layer and secrete proteins as do some animals cells*
The so-called cellular slime mold, a unicellular organism that may transition into a multicellular organism under stress, has just been found to have a tissue structure that was previously thought to exist only in more sophisticated animals. What’s more, two proteins that are needed by the slime mold to form this structure are similar to those that perform the same function in more sophistical animals.
Shortly after an animal embryo forms, it develops a single layer of cells that, shaped like a hollow ball, is empty at its center. Acting as a kind of “man behind the curtain” that directs these cells to organize into this hollow formation are several proteins that help each cell touch its neighbors but keep its top surface exposed to the formation’s empty interior. (more…)
