Contents
Vol 2007, Issue 414
Contents
Perspectives
- Regeneration in Liver and Pancreas: Time to Cut the Umbilical Cord?
Methods that enhance the proliferative and functional capacity of terminally differentiated cells may offer the greatest promise for creating tissues for human therapy.
- New Insights into the Mechanisms of SOS Activation
Interplay between the guanine nucleotide exchange factors SOS and RasGRP1 regulates Ras activation.
Protocol
- Substrate-Bound Protein Gradients for Cell Culture Fabricated by Microfluidic Networks and Microcontact Printing
Cellular responses to a defined microscopic pattern of a protein can be studied in a controlled in vitro environment.
Editors' Choice
- Food for Thought?
The hormone leptin, which suppresses appetite, protects dopaminergic neurons from neurotoxin-induced apoptosis.
- Starved into Submission?
Regulatory T cells may inhibit the immune response by depriving effector T cells of cytokines and thereby eliciting their apoptotic death.
- Oxygen-Starved Worms
Hypoxic preconditioning occurs in nematodes and is dependent on the Apaf-1 homolog, CED-4.
- Domesticated Mobile Elements Modulate Light Responses
Transcription factors that modulate light responses in plants have been co-opted from an ancestral transposon, suggesting that mobile elements are a driving force in evolution.
- β2-Adrenergic Receptor Structures
The 2.4 Å structure of the human β2-adrenergic receptor displays an architecture and helical orientation distinct from that of rhodopsin, the prototypical member of this family.
- InsP7 and Insulin Release
Pancreatic β cells maintain high amounts of the signaling molecule inositol pyrophosphate to help ensure ready release of insulin in response to metabolic demands.