Sweet recipe for cellular closeness

Sweet recipe for cellular closeness

T esticular germ cells are clingy, adhering to the cells that nurture them. Huang and Stanley (1) reveal a protein whose activity promotes this togetherness by making glycoproteins on the germ cells’ surface stickier. Many proteins sport carbohydrate attachments called N-glycans (2). Cells affi x and modify N-glycans as a glycoprotein wends its way through the secretory pathway (3). How a prote...

Training inhibitory control. A recipe for resisting sweet temptations.

When inhibitory control is lacking, people are more prone to indulge in high calorie food. This research examined whether training to inhibit food-related responses renders one less susceptible to temptations of high calorie food. Trait chocolate lovers were divided into three conditions: participants either consistently inhibited responding to chocolate stimuli (chocolate/no-go condition), con...

Psychological and metabolic stress: a recipe for accelerated cellular aging?

Chronic stress can affect human health through a myriad of behavioral and biochemical pathways. Tauhis review focuses on some key hormonal and metabolic pathways that appear important today. In modern society, we are faced with excessive psychological stress, as well as an epidemic of overeating, and the two together appear to have synergistic effects. Chronic stress can lead to overeating, co-...

Dan Fletcher: A recipe for cooking up cellular machines

G rowing up on a big piece of land in Texas, Dan Fletcher explored how things in both the natural and mechanical realms were put together. But in his early school days a particularly traumatic dissection of a bloated fetal pig sent him in the direction of " hard, clean " sciences. By the end of his doctoral work developing new instruments that combined optical and atomic force microscopy (AFM),...

Orange and Sunlight: A Recipe for Blisters