Volume 12 Issue 3, March 2011

Nuclear PTEN positively regulates APC–CDH1 in a phosphatase-independent manner.

Considers that ribonucleoproteins might bridge the RNA and protein worlds.

ESCRT-0 ubiquitylation is not essential for sorting.

In vivoanalysis of RNAPII elongation shows that splicing does not alter elongation rates.

Microautophagy traps targets during the biogenesis of MVBs.

SAS-6 oligomerization provides a structural basis for the ninefold symmetry of centrioles.

The NET-seq technique allows detection of nascent mRNA transcriptsin vivo.

The FANCJ and Bloom's syndrome helicases cooperate to unwind DNA in response to damage.

The cyclic AMP-responsive element-binding protein (CREB) is phosphorylated in response to a wide variety of signals, and it functions in concert with cAMP-regulated transcriptional co-activators (CRTCs). CREB and CRTCs mediate the effects of fasting and feeding signals on the expression of metabolic programmes in insulin-sensitive tissues.

HTRA proteases perform a variety of protein quality control functions that are of key importance to cell fate. This Review discusses the emerging physiological implications and unique architectural and mechanistic features of bacterial, plant and mammalian HTRAs.

Single-molecule techniques, such as atomic force microscopy, single-molecule fluorescence microscopy and optical tweezers, have helped resolve the mechanisms behind the power strokes, processive steps and forces of cytoskeletal motors. Such techniques might also reveal how motors are integrated into composite mechanical machines to generate complex functions in cells.

Asymmetric cell division is essential in many organisms, as it generates different cell types and maintains stem cell pools. The identification of key molecular players, and a comparison with the pathways in animals, allows a better mechanistic understanding of asymmetric cell division in plants and algae.

The signalling activity of cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) such as cadherins, immunoglobulin-like CAMs or integrins has been considered a direct consequence of their adhesive properties. However, in some cases CAMs can activate signalling in the absence of cell adhesion, which significantly extends their range of biological activities.

Unlike somatic cells, stem cells persist throughout life, which may increase their risk of accumulating DNA damage. recent studies indicate that stem cells use different mechanisms (such as the error-prone non-homologous end joining pathway) from somatic cells to maintain genomic integrity, which could have deleterious consequences for their long-term function.