Insulin, long recognized as a primary regulator of blood glucose, is now also understood to play key roles in neuroplasticity, neuromodulation, and neurotrophism.
Insulin, long recognized as a primary regulator of blood glucose, is now also understood to play key roles in neuroplasticity, neuromodulation, and neurotrophism.
Present in every tissue of the body, ubiquitin appears to be involved in a dizzying array of functions, from cell cycle and division to organelle and ribosome biogenesis, as well as the response to viral infection. The protein plays at least two role
Despite its discovery as a protein that seems to show up everywhere, at least in eukaryotic cells, researchers are only beginning to scratch the surface of all of the cellular functions involving ubiquitin. As a monomer, ubiquitin can bind and tag ot
Telomeres are repetitive, noncoding sequences that cap the ends of linear chromosomes. They consist of hexameric nucleotide sequences (TTAGGG in humans) repeated hundreds to thousands of times. Telomeres protect the protein-coding sequences of DNA on
There are five steps of autophagosome biogenesis: induction, expansion, vesicle completion, fusion, and cargo degradation. While much has been learned over the past few decades about how this process works, the big question that remains is where the
Not all inflammation leads to pain. Despite widespread infection followed by fever, colds rarely cause pain. But when some cytokines and certain immune cells are active near pain-sensing nerves, they trigger receptors that convey pain sensations to t
The tongue may be the epicenter of taste sensation, but taste receptors are scattered throughout the digestive and respiratory tracts.
While gut microbiota appear to have both positive and negative impacts on our health, in the guts of healthy, lean individuals, the good outweighs the bad. Gut bacteria, most of which reside in the large intestine, process many otherwise indigest
Gut bacteria that feed on healthy food appear to amplify the nutritional benefits of those foods. However, they also appear to amplify the undesirable effects of unhealthy food. Here are a few examples. Read the full story.
The optogenetic toolset is composed of genetically encoded molecules that, when targeted to specific neurons in the brain, enable the electrical activity of those neurons to be driven or silenced by light. When these opsins are expressed in the lipid