Cell & Microbiology

Plastics, medicines, cosmetics—there are very few everyday products that do not rely on using fossil resources. A European research team led by Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin is now aiming to revolutionize this…

Scientists from six Asian countries have launched an ambitious 10-year effort to build synthetic cells from non-living molecules, marking the region's first coordinated push to create an artificial single-celled biological…

Cells are typically studied outside the body under controlled laboratory conditions. However, conventional flat cell culture methods do not fully reproduce the complex three-dimensional environments that cells experience in living…

What if a process we associate with aging actually helps the body heal? A study led by Mikolaj Ogrodnik, LBI Trauma, published in Nature Cell Biology, shows that cells enter…

Decades of reliance on the antibiotic rifampicin have fueled the rise of drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). But as the bacterium mutates to protect itself from the drug, it also creates…

Even though sugars are often framed as simple sources of energy, they also serve as structurally complex and functionally diverse molecules that mediate interactions between organisms. Among these, β-1,2-glucans, which…

Scientists have uncovered how the interplay between cell shape and mechanical stress influences the orientation of stomata (microscopic pores on the leaf surface) during early plant development.

When viruses invade a plant, you might expect an all-out immune war. But new research published in Science shows that, much like in humans, too strong an immune response can…

It's tricky to make an exact copy of yourself. Or at least it is for cells undergoing mitosis, where cells replicate everything inside of them, including their neatly packaged DNA,…

Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are tiny eight-legged animals that can survive in extreme environments, where humans and most other animals would die. This resistance to…

Researchers in Leiden have, for the first time, observed how a specialized enzyme helps bacteria stay alive when oxygen levels are low, and how that process can be blocked. The…