Cells

Tesla has confirmed that it has ramped battery cell production enough to 1,000 Cybertrucks a week at Gigafactory Texas. The automaker hasn’t been releasing many details about its effort to ramp up its own battery cell production at Gigafactory Texas. At first, it was 4680 cells for the Model Y, but with the start of Cybertruck production, Tesla switched production to a new version of the cell for the electric pickup truck. During its last earnings call, Tesla’s SVP of energy engineering, Drew…

So you've just turned 40. Congrats! You make little groaning sounds now when you stand up, you just noticed a gray hair in your eyebrow of all places, and you've finally given in and graduated to a new notch on your belt. Age-related weight gain – or middle-age spread – is so common in many parts of the world that it's almost become a cliché. The average young adult in the US can expect to put on nearly 15 kilograms (about 30 pounds) by the time they're 50. A recent study on the brains and bodies of mice might help us…

Our immune system is talented at telling the difference between the chemistry of our own body and that of an invading pathogen. When it malfunctions, our body can become host to an intense civil war. Scientists are keen to understand this in more detail, and a newly identified 'switch' that deactivates a sensor of foreign DNA may provide important insight. A key part of this discovery, made by a team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, is an enzyme called cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS). This protein…

Cannibal Cells Inspire Cancer Treatment ImprovementGiving cells an appetite for cancer could enhance treatmentsBy Kate Graham-ShawMacrophage (green) consuming cancer cells. Credit: From “Hyperactive Rac Stimulates Cannibalism of Living Target Cells and Enhances CAR-M-Mediated Cancer Cell Killing,” by Abhinava K. Mishra et al., in Cell Biology; December, 2023.In living organisms, some cells ruthlessly gobble up others. This “cellular cannibalism” is a common natural process: within your own body, white blood cells are…

Scientists have discovered a revolutionary two-step method to halt and eliminate active cancer cells, focusing on basal-like breast cancer. This approach uses tool molecules to induce a pro-senescence state in cancer cells, making them vulnerable to new drug treatments and immune system detection.Researchers have found a way to stop active cancer cells in their tracks – meaning they can then be eliminated by new drug treatments.A collaborative research project between the University of Dundee’s Drug Discovery Unit (DDU)…

A groundbreaking study by UMass Amherst researchers has identified how plants manage cellular processes to respond to environmental changes. By focusing on the interactions among pectin, FERONIA and LLG1 receptor proteins, and the RALF peptide, the study reveals a key molecular process that enables plants to adapt and survive various stresses, providing new insights into plant resilience mechanisms.Research provides new insights into how cells in plants coordinate their responses.A team of researchers from the University…

The study reveals that the RNA modification N4-acetylcytidine (ac4C) plays a crucial role in the formation of stress granules and the cellular response to stress, offering new insights into the molecular mechanisms involved and identifying potential targets for disease treatment.Stress granules play a crucial role in the stress response, arising from the aggregation of non-translating mRNAs and proteins. Although significant knowledge exists about stress granules, the mechanisms behind their mRNA localization remain…

Amorphous solar cells with FIDO technology are more efficient, stable, and lightweight. Credit: Yutaka MatsuoA novel material called fullerene indanones (FIDO) has been created by a Japanese research team, offering improved durability and efficiency for next-generation solar cells, with potential applications extending to organic photodiodes and photodetectors.A group led by researchers at Nagoya University in Japan has created a material based on fullerene indanones (FIDO), which promises to improve the durability of…

Scientists have grown small but complex models of human organs from live fetus cells for the first time, giving experts new insight into our development and potential treatments for malformations while in the womb.These organoids aren't full replicas of organs, but they're close enough to the real deal that they can be used to study disease and other aspects of human biology that are difficult to investigate in living people.In a new study carried out by an international team of researchers, lung, kidney, and intestine…

The story of how life started on Earth is one that scientists are eager to learn. Researchers may have uncovered an important detail in the plot of chapter one: an explanation of how bubbles of fat came to form the membranes of the very first cells.A key part of the new findings, made by a team from The Scripps Research Institute in California, is that a chemical process called phosphorylation may have happened earlier than previously thought.This process adds groups of atoms that include phosphorus to a molecule,…