Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 884 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2796

Author: Giulio Superti-Furga

An explosion of scientific and technological advances has broadened the field of biomedicine. Traditional boundaries between the public and private research sectors are now blurred by multidisciplinary projects and the necessity for new and more efficient models of the translational process. This allows the adventurous

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 816 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2798

Author: Iley Ozerlat

Regulation of cell motility is important for the metastatic dissemination of tumour cells from their primary location to lymph or blood vessels. Transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) signalling — which is mediated by Smad transcription factors — enhances cell motility and tumour progression. Erik Sahai and

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 813 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2800

Author: Mark Estelle

For most of the past century, scientists interested in plant growth and development generally fell into two different camps. Those interested in growth worked on plant hormones such as the small indolic molecule auxin, which regulates plant cell division and expansion. Meanwhile, plant developmental biologists

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 813 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2801

Author: Emily J. Chenette

The enzyme telomerase maintains chromosome integrity by synthesizing telomeres at chromosome ends. What prevents telomerase from adding telomeres to double-stranded DNA breaks (DSBs)? In Nature Cell Biology, Svetlana Makovets and Elizabeth Blackburn now report that DNA damage signalling induces phosphorylation of the telomerase inhibitor

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 815 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2802

Author: Kim Baumann

On pathogen infection, plants initiate a rapid cell death programme — known as hypersensitive cell death — at the site of infection to prevent pathogens from spreading to healthy tissues. How cell death is executed and whether plants share cell death mechanisms with animals remains

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 831 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2797

Authors: Markus Affolter, Rolf Zeller & Emmanuel Caussinus

Branched structures are evident at all levels of organization in living organisms. Many organs, such as the vascular system, lung, kidney and mammary gland, are heavily branched. In each of these cases, equally fascinating questions have been put forward, including those that address the cellular

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 843 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2799

Authors: Patrick T. Caswell, Suryakiran Vadrevu & Jim C. Norman

Since it has become clear that adhesion receptors are trafficked through the endosomal pathway and that this can influence their function, much effort has been invested in obtaining detailed descriptions of the molecular machinery responsible for internalizing and recycling integrins. New findings indicate that integrin

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 816 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2806

Author: Rachel David

Mammalian circadian rhythms, which govern activities such as sleeping and eating, are regulated by a light-controlled master clock in the brain. Mammals also have clocks in their peripheral organs, which are regulated by nutrient availability through an unknown molecular mechanism. Now, Lamia et al.

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 814 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2808

Author: Katharine H. Wrighton

Fluorescence microscopy is limited by the fact that many light-absorbing chromophores do not emit a detectable level of fluorescence and are not easily tagged with fluorophores in a physiological context. Min and colleagues now show how non-fluorescent molecules can be imaged using a technique known

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 819 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2803

Authors: Stefanie L. Ritter & Randy A. Hall

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) mediate physiological responses to various ligands, such as hormones, neurotransmitters and sensory stimuli. The signalling and trafficking properties of GPCRs are often highly malleable depending on the cellular context. Such fine-tuning of GPCR function can be attributed in many cases to

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 854 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2804

Authors: Julia R. Kardon & Ronald D. Vale

Eukaryotic cells use cytoskeletal motor proteins to transport many different intracellular cargos. Numerous kinesins and myosins have evolved to cope with the various transport needs that have arisen during eukaryotic evolution. Surprisingly, a single cytoplasmic dynein (a minus end-directed microtubule motor) carries out similarly diverse

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 866 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2805

Authors: Philip A. Romero & Frances H. Arnold

Directed evolution circumvents our profound ignorance of how a protein's sequence encodes its function by using iterative rounds of random mutation and artificial selection to discover new and useful proteins. Proteins can be tunedto adapt to new functions or environments by simple adaptive walks involving

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 877 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2807

Authors: Nobutaka Hirokawa, Ryo Nitta & Yasushi Okada

Most kinesins move processively along microtubules by using energy derived from ATP hydrolysis. Almost all of the intermediate structures of this ATPase reaction cycle have been solved for the monomeric kinesin 3 family motor KIF1A. Based on this structural information, we propose a common mechanism

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 814 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2809

Stem cells

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 814 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2810

Author: Kim Baumann

Sister chromatid cohesion ensures proper chromosome segregation and is mediated by the cohesin complex forming a ring around sister chromatids. How DNA replication forks go through cohesin-associated obstructions to achieve genome replication remains unclear. Prasad Jallepalli and colleagues now report that fork advancement depends on

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 812 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2811

Author: Francesca Cesari

Primary cilia are present on most eukaryotic cells, where they function as sensory organelles to relay information from the external environment into the cell. Cilia are assembled by means of intraflagellar transport (IFT) — a process carried out by multimeric IFT particles and molecular motors.

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 817 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2812

Reprogramming

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 816 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2813

On the DNA–RNA pivotThe RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) mediates RNA cleavage by forming a complex with DNA and nascent RNA. The catalytic residues for RNA cleavage lie in the PIWI domain of the RISC component Argonaute (Ago). Now, Wang et al. define the

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 10, 811 (2009). doi:10.1038/nrm2814

This year p53 celebrates 30 years of research. We mark this occasion with a Poster highlighting some of the key discoveries that have led to our current understanding of p53 as a tumour suppressor that regulates many important biological activities, and is itself regulated by