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Lineage commitment requires stem cells to loosen their grip on pluripotency, sequentially picking and choosing among competing genetic programs to realize specific cell fates. New findings described in this issue's Stem Cell Select address the impact of history and cellular memory on differentiation events and reveal critical molecular mediators of stem cell reprogramming and pluripotency.
Formation of microtubule architectures, required for cell shape maintenance in yeast, directional cell expansion in plants and cytokinesis in eukaryotes, depends on antiparallel microtubule crosslinking by the conserved MAP65 protein family. Here, we combine structural and single molecule fluorescence methods to examine how PRC1, the human MAP65, crosslinks antiparallel microtubules. We find that...
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau deposition in brain. It has emerged that Aβ toxicity is tau dependent, although mechanistically this link remains unclear. Here, we show that tau, known as axonal protein, has a dendritic function in postsynaptic targeting of the Src kinase Fyn, a substrate of which is the NMDA receptor (NR). Missorting of tau in transgenic mice expressing...
During cell division, microtubules are arranged in a large bipolar structure, the mitotic spindle, to segregate the duplicated chromosomes. Antiparallel microtubule overlaps in the spindle center are essential for establishing bipolarity and maintaining spindle stability throughout mitosis. In anaphase, this antiparallel microtubule array is tightly bundled forming the midzone, which serves as a hub...
Opposing roles of Aurora kinases and protein phosphatase 1 (PP1) during mitosis have long been suggested. Here, we demonstrate that Aurora kinases A and B phosphorylate a conserved residue on the kinetochore motor CENP-E. PP1 binds CENP-E via a motif overlapping this phosphorylation site and binding is disrupted by Aurora phosphorylation. Phosphorylation of CENP-E by the Auroras is enriched at spindle...
Stem cells repopulate tissues after injury while also renewing themselves, but this makes them vulnerable to genotoxic damage. Mohrin et al. (2010) and Milyavsky et al. (2010) now show that mouse and human hematopoietic stem cells make opposing decisions about whether to die or to persist in response to DNA damage.
Microtubules assemble into arrays of bundled filaments that are critical for multiple steps in cell division, including anaphase and cytokinesis. Recent structural and functional studies, including two papers in this issue of Cell (Bieling et al., 2010; Subramanian et al., 2010), demonstrate how the MAP65 protein PRC1 crosslinks microtubules and cooperates with kinesin motors to control the dynamics...
Although mitochondrial biogenesis requires the import of specific RNAs, the pathways and cellular machineries involved are only poorly understood. Wang et al. (2010) now find that polynucleotide phosphorylase in the intermembrane space of mammalian mitochondria facilitates import of several RNAs into the mitochondrial matrix.
RNA import into mammalian mitochondria is considered essential for replication, transcription, and translation of the mitochondrial genome but the pathway(s) and factors that control this import are poorly understood. Previously, we localized polynucleotide phosphorylase (PNPASE), a 3′ → 5′ exoribonuclease and poly-A polymerase, in the mitochondrial intermembrane space, a location lacking resident...
The tumor suppressor protein p53 coordinates the cellular response to stress through regulation of gene expression. Now, Huarte et al. (2010) identify a long intergenic noncoding RNA as a new player in p53-mediated repression of genes involved in apoptosis.
The axonal protein tau and amyloid β-peptide (Aβ) are key players in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, and tau mediates Aβ toxicity, but it is not clear how. Ittner et al. (2010) now report an unexpected physiological function for tau in neuronal dendrites that may explain how tau mediates Aβ; toxicity.
Hyperactivity of mTORC1, a key mediator of cell growth, leads to stem cell depletion, although the underlying mechanisms are poorly defined. Using spermatogonial progenitor cells (SPCs) as a model system, we show that mTORC1 impairs stem cell maintenance by a negative feedback from mTORC1 to receptors required to transduce niche-derived signals. We find that SPCs lacking Plzf, a transcription factor...
DNA transposition has contributed significantly to evolution of eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Insertion sequences (ISs) are the simplest prokaryotic transposons and are divided into families on the basis of their organization and transposition mechanism. Here, we describe a link between transposition of IS608 and ISDra2, both members of the IS200/IS605 family, which uses obligatory single-stranded DNA...
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