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Factors that determine whether precursor cells will differentiate into adipocytes remain poorly understood. A systematic evaluation of gene expression in cells with a continuum of differentiation potentials has confirmed the importance of certain pathways and has identified a novel regulator of brown adipogenesis.
How cells disassemble their focal adhesions is not well understood. Now, Ezratty et al. have shown that the GTPase dynamin acts after microtubule targeting of focal adhesions to trigger their disassembly. One intriguing possibility is that dynamin might drive disassembly through endocytosis.
It has long been known that the mammalian small GTPase Rab5 is involved in clathrin-mediated endocytosis. However, most Rab5-interacting proteins are localized to endosomes rather than to the plasma membrane. A newly discovered nucleotide-exchange factor for Rab5 in Caenorhabditis elegans now provides the missing link for activating Rab5 at the plasma membrane.
The small GTPase Ran controls nucleocytoplasmic transport and has multiple roles during cell division. A new study has identified the nuclear export factor Crm1 as a mitotic effector of Ran-GTP at kinetochores, where it has a role in microtubule attachment.
A recent study has shown that the Ssl1 subunit of the general transcription/DNA repair factor TFIIH contains ubiquitin ligase activity that is dependent on a RING domain. The RING domain is required for transcription of a subset of yeast genes that are involved in DNA damage repair, thus uncovering a novel ubiquitination-associated function for TFIIH in the repair process.