Get that myokine burn

Musclin is an activity-stimulated myokine that enhances physical endurance.

Exercise remains the most effective way to promote physical and metabolic wellbeing, but molecular mechanisms underlying exercise tolerance and its plasticity are only partially understood. In this study we identify musclin-a peptide with high homology to natriuretic peptides (NP)-as an exercise-responsive myokine that acts to enhance exercise capacity in mice. We use human primary myoblast cul...

Book Review: Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded

This is the premise which the author, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, carries throughout the book. It is an alarming notion for some, acceptable to others, but nonetheless fresh and thought provoking to most. As scientists, we often delegate the actual writing process to a secondary role in the process of scientific investigation and reporting. But as ...

The things that get measured are the things that get done.

Ensuring that yeast cells get their inheritance

A long with its DNA, a fungal cell might also hand down nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) to its offspring. A nuclear pore protein paves the way for the complexes to move from mother cell to daughter, Makio et al. and Colombi et al. reveal (1, 2). Researchers think that vertebrate cells don’t transfer intact NPCs to their progeny. The roughly 30 proteins, or nucleoporins, that make up a pore comple...

The one that didn't get away.

My part in a lifesaving drama was small... or so I thought.