Exploring Life at Its Simplest: Scientists Create a "Minimal Cell Membrane" with Just Two Lipids

Surprising Effects of a Two-Lipid Diet

27-Nov-2024 - Lipids, or fats, are essential to life. They form the membranes around cells, protecting them from the outside. In nature, there is an enormous diversity of lipids, with each organism having its own unique combination. But what are the minimum lipid requirements for a cell to survive? A research ...

What triggers the programmed cell death mechanism?

Development and combination of various microscopic and spectroscopic techniques

13-Sep-2024 - How can molecular structures be analysed when the resolution of the techniques available is not sufficient? Researchers from the fields of physics, chemistry and medicine at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have combined and further developed various microscopic and spectroscopic ...

Research team shows how a cell’s form can be reversed

Light-switchable molecules in membranes enable different forms of living cells to be studied

28-Jun-2023 - A research team led by Prof. Bart Jan Ravoo (University of Münster) and Prof. Timo Betz (University of Göttingen) describes for the first time how living cells can be reversibly deformed by specifically influencing the cell membrane using light. Membranes fulfil a variety of tasks in living ...

Molecular scales on biological membranes: Mass-Sensitive Particle Tracking

New method to determine location and size changes of unlabeled proteins on membranes via their mass

06-Oct-2021 - A large proportion of biologically relevant processes take place at membranes. Studying the dynamics of these processes in real time and without disturbing the biological system is still a major methodological challenge. A team led by Petra Schwille, director at the MPI of Biochemistry (MPIB), ...

Cell Membranes in Super Resolution

For the first time ever, expansion microscopy allows the imaging of even the finest details of cell membranes. This offers new insights into bacterial and viral infection processes

04-Dec-2020 - Expansion microscopy (ExM) enables the imaging of cells and their components with a spatial resolution far below 200 nanometres. For this purpose, the proteins of the sample under investigation are cross-linked into a swellable polymer. Once the interactions between the molecules have been ...

Dynamic images show rhomboid protease in action

01-Nov-2019 - Rhomboid proteases are clinically relevant membrane proteins that play a key role in various diseases. Using solid-state NMR spectroscopy, researchers from Berlin’s Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) have now been able to watch rhomboid proteases in a native lipid ...

How proteins reshape cell membranes

27-Feb-2017 - Small "bubbles" frequently form on membranes of cells and are taken up into their interior. The process involves EHD proteins - a focus of research by Prof. Oliver Daumke of the MDC. He and his team have now shed light on how these proteins assemble on the surface of a cell and reshape its ...

Nanoscale ruler reveals organization of the cell membrane

Freiburg biologists measure distances and the arrangement of membrane molecules in nanometer range

27-Jun-2014 - After a ten-year effort, Prof. Dr. Michael Reth from the Institute of Biology III of the University of Freiburg and the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics has developed a method to investigate the cell surface's organization on a nanometer scale. This allows him to monitor how ...

Nanotubes: cellular membranes on supply

Osmotic forces play a role in nanotube formation in cells

16-Mar-2011 - When unfolding a tent for the first time, you may wonder how the huge tarpaulin fits into a bag the size of a football. Biologists wonder about something similar: when a cell divides, the surface area of the cell membrane grows. Moreover, when molecules are brought from one organelle to another ...

F is for Fluoresence and Fluorine

New dyes for optical nanoscopy

30-Mar-2010 - The imaging of living cells at the molecular level was barely a dream twenty years ago. Today, however, this dream is close to becoming reality. In the Max Planck Institute for NanoBiophotonics in Göttingen, Stefan Hell has developed fluorescence microscopy methods for observing objects on the ...