Aucott et al. report the first in vivo experiments on the heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) family, which sidles up to silent DNA. The results, to be published in the Nov. 17 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology, add to the evidence that the different versions of the proteins help cells fix broken DNA.

Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have made major headway in explaining a mechanism by which plant cells silence potentially harmful genes.

Microvesicles – tiny membrane-covered sacs – released from glioblastoma cells contain molecules that may provide data that can guide treatment of the deadly brain tumor. In their report in the December 2008 Nature Cell Biology, which is receiving early online release, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers describe finding tumor-associated RNA and proteins in membrane microvesicles called exosomes in blood samples from glioblastoma patients. Detailed analysis of exosome contents identified factors that could facilitate a tumor's growth through delivery of genetic information or proteins, or signify its vulnerability to particular medications.

A protein known to inhibit the growth of ovarian cancer works in part by forcing cancer cells to eat themselves until they die, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Nov. 15 issue of Cancer Research.

Researchers at the University of Delaware have provided what is believed to be the first experimental evidence that plants can take up nanoparticles and accumulate them in their tissues

All biological reactions within human cells depend on enzymes. Their power as catalysts enables biological reactions to occur usually in milliseconds. But how slowly would these reactions proceed spontaneously, in the absence of enzymes – minutes, hours, days? And why even pose the question?

New research, just published by researchers from the University of Georgia, provides the first evidence that a key gene may be crucial to maintaining the production of the thymus and its disease-fighting T-cells after an animal's birth.

Researchers have generated the first comprehensive genetic blueprint of a forming mammalian organ, shedding light on the genetic and molecular dynamics of kidney development.

The question of whether or not to continue to pursue the development of T-cell-based HIV-1 vaccines has been a source of controversy following last year's widely publicized failure of the field's most promising candidate, a vaccine developed by Merck known as V520.

How 'molecular machines' inside cells swing into action to activate genes at different times in a cell's life is revealed today (6 November) in new research published in Molecular Cell.