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Cell
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Jun 29, 2017

Volume 170Issue 1p1-214
Open Archive
On the cover: Proteins, pathogens, and other cargos enter the cell by a process called endocytosis. The last step of this process, scission, involves cutting the membrane enveloping the cargo to release it into the cell. In this issue, Simunovic and coworkers (pp. 172–184) describe a new scission mechanism that does not rely on the canonical scission module dynamin; instead, an elongating tubular membrane breaks due to friction. After the cargo invaginates the membrane forming a tube, BAR domain proteins (green crescent particles) form a scaffold around the tube. The motor protein dynenin (depicted here as the super heroine) grabs and elongates the tube while walking on microtubules. The friction between the tightly bound BAR protein scaffold and the lipids underneath and the consequent extensile force increases the tension in the tube and causes it to break, allowing the cargo to enter the trafficking pathways in the cell. Cover illustrated by Maja Ðeke....
On the cover: Proteins, pathogens, and other cargos enter the cell by a process called endocytosis. The last step of this process, scission, involves cutting the membrane enveloping the cargo to release it into the cell. In this issue, Simunovic and coworkers (pp. 172–184) describe a new scission mechanism that does not rely on the canonical scission module dynamin; instead, an elongating tubular membrane breaks due to friction. After the cargo invaginates the membrane forming a tube, BAR domain proteins (green crescent particles) form a scaffold around the tube. The motor protein dynenin (depicted here as the super heroine) grabs and elongates the tube while walking on microtubules. The friction between the tightly bound BAR protein scaffold and the lipids underneath and the consequent extensile force increases the tension in the tube and causes it to break, allowing the cargo to enter the trafficking pathways in the cell. Cover illustrated by Maja Ðeke.
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Leading Edge

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  • One (Cell) in a Million

    • Matthew Pavlovich
    Imagine that you have a bag of candy. Every once in a while, you grab a few pieces and eat them without thinking too much about it. They taste good, maybe vaguely like strawberries. You think the candy might be a pale pink. Now, you grab another handful. This time, you take a closer look and are surprised to find out that most of them are white and sweet, though unflavored—and all of the strawberry taste comes from a few rare bright pink candies.

Bench to Bedside

  • Splicing-Correcting Therapy for SMA

    • Lili Wan,
    • Gideon Dreyfuss
    Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is caused by deficiency of SMN protein, which is crucial for spliceosome subunits biogenesis. Most SMA patients have SMN1 deletions, leaving SMN2 as sole SMN source; however, a C→T substitution converts an exonic-splicing enhancer (ESE) to a silencer (ESS), causing frequent exon7 skipping in SMN2 pre-mRNA and yielding a truncated protein. Antisense treatment to SMN2 intron7-splicing silencer (ISS) improves SMN expression and motor function. To view this Bench to Bedside, open or download the PDF.

Voices

  • What Is the Future of Developmental Biology?

    In the pre-molecular era, experimental embryology defined the concepts of induction, morphogen gradients, and signaling centers. In the 1980s, developmental genetics identified the genes and signaling cascades that underlie these concepts. A multitude of papers described how a handful of signaling pathways shape every organ. The joke was that there are two types of developmental biologists: those who know they work on Notch (or Hedgehog, BMP, or Wnt) and those who don’t. This became repetitive, which seriously hurt the field.

Previews

  • Approaching TERRA Firma: Genomic Functions of Telomeric Noncoding RNA

    • Caitlin M. Roake,
    • Steven E. Artandi
    Functions of the telomeric repeat-containing RNA (TERRA), the long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) transcribed from telomeres, have eluded researchers. In this issue of Cell, Graf el al. and Chu et al. uncover new regulatory roles for TERRA at the telomere and at distant genomic sites.

  • How the Gut Feels, Smells, and Talks

    • Joep Beumer,
    • Hans Clevers
    Gut-brain signaling plays a central role in a range of homeostatic processes, yet details of this cross-talk remain enigmatic. In this issue of Cell, Bellono and colleagues identify a variety of luminal stimuli acting on serotonin-secreting enteroendocrine cells and, for the first time, demonstrate a functional synaptic interaction with neurons.

  • A New Drug Target for Type 2 Diabetes

    • Lukas K.J. Stadler,
    • I. Sadaf Farooqi
    Genetic studies can identify novel therapeutic targets for common complex diseases. In this issue of Cell, Rusu et al. demonstrate that a cluster of genetic variants associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes affect the function of a monocarboxylate transporter involved in nutrient flux and hepatic lipid metabolism.

  • Friction at the BAR Leads to Membrane Breakup

    • Kranthi K. Mandadapu,
    • James H. Hurley
    A long-standing question in cell biology is how endocytic vesicles and tubules detach from the plasma membrane in the absence of constriction by dynamin. In this issue of Cell, Simunovic et al. describe an elegant biophysical model in which friction between lipids and BAR-domain proteins drives the scission of elongating membrane tubules.

Review

  • RAS Proteins and Their Regulators in Human Disease

    • Dhirendra K. Simanshu,
    • Dwight V. Nissley,
    • Frank McCormick
    RAS proteins have been linked to several cancers. The identification of RAS regulatory proteins has provided deeper insights into the biochemical and biophysical properties of RAS proteins as well as shed light into ways to target them pharmacologically.

Articles

SnapShot

  • SnapShot: Electrochemical Communication in Biofilms

    • Dong-yeon D. Lee,
    • Arthur Prindle,
    • Jintao Liu,
    • Gürol M. Süel
    The role of electricity in biological systems was first appreciated through electrical stimulation experiments performed by Luigi Galvani in the 18th century. These pioneering experiments demonstrated that the behavior of living tissues is governed by the flow of electrochemical species—an insight that gave rise to the modern field of electrophysiology. Since then, electrophysiology has largely remained a bastion of neuroscience. However, exciting recent developments have demonstrated that even simple bacteria residing in communities use electrochemical communication to coordinate population-level behaviors. These recent works are defining the emerging field of bacterial biofilm electrophysiology. To view this SnapShot, open or download the PDF.
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