Cell movements totally modular, Stanford study shows

01.12.08 - 17:26 ... source : Stanford University School of Medicine

... BY ROSANNE SPECTOR STANFORD, Calif. — A study describing how cells within blood vessel walls move en masse overturns an assumption common in the age of genomics — that the proteins driving cell behavior are doing so much multitasking that it would be near impossible to group them according to a few discrete functions. But now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown that distinct groups of proteins each control one of four simple activities involved in the cells' collective migration. The findings were published in the Dec. 1 issue of Genes and Development. Graduate student Philip Vitorino, the study's first author, began the project in 2004 in the laboratory of senior author Tobias Meyer, PhD, professor of chemical and systems biology. The work is part of the Meyer lab's larger effort to find order in the overwhelming complexity of the inner workings of cells. First they ...» Next (HTML)