SCAR Makes Progress

Progress in protrusion: the tell-tale scar.

The crawling movement of a cell involves protrusion of its leading edge, in coordination with the translocation of its cell body, and depends upon a cytoplasmic machinery able to respond to signals from the environment. Protrusion is now understood to be driven by actin polymerization, and signalling from membrane receptors to actin has been shown to be mediated by the Rho family of GTPases. Ho...

Food and agriculture Food irradiation makes progress

About a quarter of the world's food production is lost after harvesting, even though a number of food preservation methods are readily available. Losses occur especially in the tropical regions where most developing countries are situated: perhaps because the available food preservation technologies do not function efficiently in such environments, or because they do not lend themselves to the ...

Guidelines for cardiac arrhythmias: practice makes progress.

L1 Makes Immunological Progress by Expanding Its Relations

The cell-adhesion molecule L1 was originally described in the nervous system. It has recently been detected in CD4+ T lymphocytes, peripheral B lymphocytes, and granulocytes in the human immune system and in similar leucocyte types in the murine immune system. L1 mediates neural recognition by Ca+2, Mg+2-independent homophilic binding. In the human and murine immune systems, L1 binds to the "cl...

Osteosarcoma: Accelerating Progress Makes for a Hopeful Future

Patients who develop osteosarcoma in 2017 receive treatment that remains essentially unchanged since the 1970s. Outcomes likewise remain largely unimproved. Large, collaborative, multinational efforts to improve therapy have evaluated strategies leveraging both cytotoxic intensification and immunomodulatory agents. While these have confirmed our capacity to conduct such trials, results have pro...