Living Cells News and Research

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New Living Material Restricts Cyanobacterial Cell Division to Boost Ethylene Output

Finnish researchers have taken an important step toward long-lasting production of renewable chemicals and fuels using photosynthetic microorganisms.

11 Aug 2026

Simple Synthetic Cells Change Shape Without Complex Biochemical Signaling Pathways

Using simple artificial cells, a research group led by Makito Miyazaki of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) in Japan have uncovered fundamental physical principles that govern how living cells change their shape.

5 Aug 2026

Method Reveals How Influenza A Takes Over Host Cell Machinery

A new study identifies influenza A virus interactions with human proteins, uncovering mechanisms of paraspeckle disruption and insights for antiviral development.

4 Aug 2026

Scientists Discover How Heart Muscle Cells Remodel Actin Filaments

Biophysicists unraveled a mystery of how muscles form at the molecular level and how they maintain their function.

30 Jul 2026

Northwestern Chemists Repurpose Flexible DNA as Programmable Molecular Glue

For decades, scientists have largely relied on painstaking trial and error to coax proteins into crystalline forms.

30 Jul 2026

Synthetic Biology Breakthrough Rebuilds Basic Features of Cellular Life

Nature is beautiful, powerful and essential. But nature is not always gentle. The same biological world that gives rise to forests, coral reefs and human life also produces infections, cancer, genetic disease, crop blights and toxins.

24 Jul 2026

Next-Generation Biosensing Shows How Bacteriophages Revolutionize Bacterial Disease Detection

Pathogenic bacteria remain a persistent threat to public health, food supplies, and water systems, particularly as antimicrobial resistance makes infections increasingly difficult to treat.

11 Jul 2026

First Atomic Level Images Reveal Blueprint for Better RNA Drugs

RNA interference is a natural mechanism for living cells to control whether specific genes are being used or not.

30 Jun 2026

Self-Propelled Actin Structures Drive Shape Changes in Human Cells

Every time a white blood cell engulfs a bacterium, a neuron extends a projection to connect with a neighboring cell, or when a cancer cell forcefully squeezes through tissue to spread, the cell must change its shape to accommodate the movement.

26 Jun 2026

Automated Cell-Free Systems Boost Protein Production Performance Five-Fold

A research team led by Professor Joongoo Lee in the Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) has developed an automated, modular method for assembling reconstituted cell-free systems, which are test-tube systems that can produce proteins outside living cells.

25 Jun 2026

Real-Time Molecular Tool Observes Complex Immune System Changes

A lot of things need to go right on a molecular level for immune cells to launch an adaptive response to an infection.

24 Jun 2026

New Study Reveals How Introns Jump Between Species Without Viral Help

Jumping genes are parasites in the genetic material of bacteria, plants, animals and humans. They are released into the cell as small RNA molecules from ribonucleic acid (RNA) and possess complex mechanisms for inserting themselves into other parts of the genetic material within the cell, thereby often conferring new properties on the cell and thus accelerating evolution. There are also jumping genes that free themselves from the RNA using an RNA enzyme. These ribozymes or self-splicing introns are a special group of jumping genes.

22 Jun 2026

New Internal Cellular Process Creates Cysteine When Primary Systems Fail

A molecular geneticist at Montana State University has discovered a cellular process once believed impossible by scientists – the creation of the amino acid cysteine within a living cell when the cell's primary systems to do so fail.

13 Jun 2026

AI Decodes Biomolecular Condensates to Revolutionize Drug Discovery

Researchers at Princeton University have harnessed AI to understand how drugs affect the dynamics of vital structures within the cell.

13 Jun 2026

Collagen Exists as Liquid-Like Droplets Inside Cells

According to a recent study from the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, collagen, the protein that forms skin, bones, tendons, and organs, occurs inside cells as a liquid-like droplet rather than the long, rigid rod portrayed in textbooks during the past fifty years.

12 Jun 2026

Cryo-EM Study Unlocks Structural Secrets of RNA Therapeutics

RNA therapeutics have emerged as one of the most promising new classes of medicines. Eight small interfering RNA (siRNA) drugs have already been approved worldwide for the treatment of genetic diseases, yet scientists have not fully understood one of the most fundamental steps underlying their function: how Argonaute, the core protein responsible for gene silencing, becomes activated.

11 Jun 2026

Coffee Can Now Serve as a Biological Switch for Medicines

For many of us, a warm cup of coffee is how we start our day. For Texas A&M Health researchers, it may also offer a new way to control engineered cells in future medicines.

9 Jun 2026

Novel Cyclic Peptides Cross Cell Membranes to Fight Disease

Many diseases are driven by proteins interacting with each other inside cells. But blocking these interactions with drugs is difficult because our typic "small-molecule" drugs often prove to be too small to grip the broad, flat surfaces involved in protein-protein interactions.

1 Jun 2026

Study Reveals Unique Heat Behavior Within Living Cells

Living cells cool much slower than our current understanding of heat conduction can explain, according to new research from the University of Tokyo. Researchers used two techniques - high-speed temperature mapping and artificial heating - to observe how heat dissipated from living cells and similar-sized artificial, fluid-filled sacs (liposomes).

29 May 2026

Scientists Reveal How Surface Acids Prevent Bacteria From Blobbing

Researchers have discovered how acids on the surface of bacteria give these microscopic organisms their characteristic "rod" shape-by keeping an enzyme at bay that would otherwise turn the cylindrical cells into shape-shifting blobs.

27 May 2026