The pioneering cell division cycle screens carried out by Hartwell in 1971 first identified septins as genes that are essential for yeast cytokinesis (Hartwell, 1971). However, significant characterization of the evolutionarily conserved proteins they encode did not begin until the late 1980s. Since then, septins have been shown to be fundamental for cytokinesis in many organisms and are recogn...

The linearity of chromosomes creates two major problems for eukaryotic cells: the end-replication problem and the endprotection problem. The end-replication problem stems from the inherent inability of the replication machinery to fully duplicate linear templates. The endprotection problem refers to the propensity of linear chromosome ends to be recognized as DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). Bo...

Lamins, the major components of the nuclear lamina, have gained rapidly increasing interest over the past decade as lamin mutations were found to cause numerous devastating diseases. These laminopathies include Emery–Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD), dilated cardiomyopathy type 1A, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 1B, familial partial lipodystrophy (FPLD), Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease type ...

With a concentration of 55,000 mM, water is by far the most prevalent molecule in biological systems. For many years it was assumed that biological membranes are freely water permeable, so that the existence of a family of water channels would not have been predicted. However, biophysical studies in erythrocytes and kidney tubules in the 1960s through the 1980s revealed that some membranes are ...

The plasma membrane is more than a simple delimitation of the boundary of the cell but is a dynamic multi-domain membrane system participating in numerous cellular processes. In many different cell types, the plasma membrane is heavily decorated with small pits of 60–80 nm in diameter, which constitute a specialized type of microdomain called caveolae. Nowadays, almost 60 years after the first ...

We discuss state-of-the-art passive devices for enhancing upperand lower-limb movement in people with neuromuscular disabilities. Special emphasis is placed on a passive functional upper-limb orthosis called the Wilmington Robotic Exoskeleton (WREX). It is exoskeletal, has two links and four degrees of freedom, and uses linear elastic elements to balance the effects of gravity in three dimensio...

Formins are conserved actin polymerization machines that have instrumental roles in controlling rearrangements of the actin cytoskeleton and have recently been shown to directly regulate microtubule dynamics. Here, and on the accompanying poster, we aim to organize a rapidly expanding body of literature on this diverse protein family, summarizing the common properties that apply to most formins...

The Housing and Urban Development-Department of Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program is the largest supported housing program for veterans in the United States and is the flagship of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) homeless services. The HUD-VASH program is expanding at an unprecedented rate, with Congress providing $150 million to the program in just the last 2 years. Our...