Reviews & Analysis

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  • Chromosome segregation during cell division is facilitated by the kinetochore, which attaches chromosomes to spindle microtubules and relays the microtubule-binding status to the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC). How kinetochore-dependent processes ensure faithful chromosome segregation is coming to light, as are the essential roles of the KMN network and kinase–phosphatase signalling.

    • Emily A. Foley
    • Tarun M. Kapoor
    Review Article
  • An increasing number of proteins have been discovered that evade turnover and instead are maintained over a cell's lifetime. Accumulation of damage in these long-lived proteins may contribute to the ageing process.

    • Brandon H. Toyama
    • Martin W. Hetzer
    Opinion
  • The heart undergoes physiological hypertrophy in response to developmental signals and increased workload. The structural and molecular characteristics of physiological cardiac hypertrophy are now being elucidated, as are the endocrine effectors and associated signalling pathways that regulate it.

    • Marjorie Maillet
    • Jop H. van Berlo
    • Jeffery D. Molkentin
    Review Article
  • The nuclear A-type and B-type lamins, key components of the lamina underlying the nuclear envelope, have been linked to the regulation of several nuclear processes. However, studies in mice have questioned the essentiality of these lamins and have provided new understanding of how lamins function in different cells and tissues.

    • Brian Burke
    • Colin L. Stewart
    Review Article
  • Sumoylation is a highly regulated process that is counteracted by specialized enzymes known as small ubiquitin-related modifier (SUMO) proteases. The recent discovery of novel SUMO proteases, together with new findings for established SUMO proteases, has led to augmented appreciation of this enzyme family.

    • Christopher M. Hickey
    • Nicole R. Wilson
    • Mark Hochstrasser
    Review Article
  • In addition to regulating the cascades leading to cell death, mitochondria detect cell stress signals (for example, viral infection) and themselves emit danger signals in response to perturbations of homeostasis to trigger cell-intrinsic or systemic responses. They can therefore be considered as master regulators of danger signalling.

    • Lorenzo Galluzzi
    • Oliver Kepp
    • Guido Kroemer
    Review Article
  • The chromosomal passenger complex (CPC), which is formed by inner centromere protein (INCENP), borealin, survivin and Aurora B kinase, targets to different locations at different times during mitosis. As it regulates key events at each of these locations, the CPC can be considered as a master regulator of mitosis.

    • Mar Carmena
    • Michael Wheelock
    • William C. Earnshaw
    Review Article
  • Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) comprise a nonspecific nuclease fused to a sequence-specific DNA-binding domain. This domain can be engineered so that TALENs can target virtually any sequence. TALENs are an efficient tool to modify genes in a wide range of cell types and organisms.

    • J. Keith Joung
    • Jeffry D. Sander
    Innovation
  • Although the physiological importance of adhesion was appreciated early in the twentieth century, understanding its molecular basis was challenging. The development of complementary biochemical and immunological approaches facilitated the discovery of the cadherins, integrins and other major adhesion families and led to the molecular era of adhesion research and the formation of a new research community.

    • Alan Rick Horwitz
    Timeline
  • Since the discovery of WNTs 30 years ago, it has become clear that this signalling pathway is incredibly complex, using more than 15 receptors and co-receptors. What has emerged is that these proteins form higher-order ligand–receptor complexes that transduce downstream signalling and influence numerous cellular processes.

    • Christof Niehrs
    Review Article
  • Researchers assess the contribution of studies in three-dimensional (3D) systems to our understanding of cell migration, both in terms of the mechanisms used to drive single cell and collective cell migration and how cells adapt to a changing environment.

    • Peter Friedl
    • Erik Sahai
    • Kenneth M. Yamada
    Viewpoint
  • Three surveillance pathways specialize in the degradation of mRNA molecules trapped in stalled translation complexes: the non-stop decay (NSD), the no-go decay (NGD) and the 18S-rRNA decay (18S-NRD) pathways. These quality control mechanisms degrade faulty mRNAs and contribute to maintaining the production of functional proteins.

    • Marc Graille
    • Bertrand Séraphin
    Opinion
  • Nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) is one of the surveillance pathways that ensure fidelity in gene expression by recognizing and degrading aberrant mRNAs. How the factors involved in NMD discriminate between normal and prematurely terminated mRNAs, and how they carry out their functions downstream of recognition, has been the subject of intense investigation.

    • Stephanie Kervestin
    • Allan Jacobson
    Review Article
  • Cryo-electron tomography has provided a means of characterizing the architecture of macromolecular complexes in their native environment, and facilitated a better understanding of cellular processes. By combining this method with fluorescence and super-resolution microscopy, the full potential of this approach can be realized.

    • Karen Fridman
    • Asaf Mader
    • Ohad Medalia
    Innovation
  • Worldwide increases in life expectancy have been paralleled by a greater prevalence of chronic and age-associated disorders, particularly of the cardiovascular, neural and metabolic systems. Patient-specific induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are finding applications in disease modelling, drug testing and drug discovery, thus enabling researchers to undertake studies for treating diseases 'in a dish'.

    • Milena Bellin
    • Maria C. Marchetto
    • Christine L. Mummery
    Review Article
  • The collective migration of border cells in the Drosophila melanogaster ovary has become a key model for dissecting the mechanisms that govern the coordinated movement of groups of cells. This has implications for our understanding of migration in diverse contexts, including during wound healing and tumour metastasis.

    • Denise J. Montell
    • Wan Hee Yoon
    • Michelle Starz-Gaiano
    Review Article
  • Like nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA possesses multiple pathways that function to preserve its integrity following exogenous insults or errors during replication. Because the candidate proteins involved are similar to those carrying out nuclear DNA repair, elucidating the contribution of each repair protein has been challenging.

    • Lawrence Kazak
    • Aurelio Reyes
    • Ian J. Holt
    Review Article
  • The activity of protein kinases is regulated by domains that are associated with the kinase core, by interacting proteins and by their incorporation into large macromolecular complexes. Thus, understanding kinase signalling requires the structural characterization of entire complexes, as exemplified by studies of cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA).

    • Susan S. Taylor
    • Ronit Ilouz
    • Alexandr P. Kornev
    Review Article