RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
FIRST PERSON
OPINION
- The triple helix of collagens – an ancient protein structure that enabled animal multicellularity and tissue evolution
Summary: The triple helix is a protein structure of fundamental importance in building the extracellular matrix that enabled animal multicellularity and tissue evolution.
REVIEW
- Dynamics of cortical domains in early Drosophila development
Summary: Cortical domains are a central feature of epithelial and polarised cells. This Review presents the dynamics of cortical domains in early Drosophila embryos and discusses underlying mechanisms for formation of cortical domains.
SHORT REPORT
- m-AAA and i-AAA complexes coordinate to regulate OMA1, the stress-activated supervisor of mitochondrial dynamics
Summary: AFG3L2 and YME1L1 coordinately regulate OMA1 maturation and consequently, mitochondrial dynamics.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
- Aurora A kinase activity is required to maintain an active spindle assembly checkpoint during prometaphase
Summary: Inhibition of Aurora A kinase activity in prometaphase leads to a removal of Mad2 from kinetochores, the loss of the SAC and a premature exit from mitosis.
- A model suite of green algae within the Scenedesmaceae for investigating contrasting desiccation tolerance and morphology
Highlighted Article: Green algae within the Scenedesmaceae, three isolated from desert crust and two aquatic, are introduced for comparative analysis of mechanisms underlying desiccation tolerance and multicellularity.
- Identification and characterisation of a cryptic Golgi complex in Naegleria gruberi
Highlighted Article: The first micrographic evidence of a cryptic Golgi organelle in the amoeba Naegleria gruberi is presented, revealing the Golgi in this species has a rare tubular morphology.
- The cytoskeleton regulates symmetry transitions in moving amoeboid cells
Summary: Dynamic shape changes of amoeboid cells are far from random, but are the consequence of refined symmetries and symmetry changes that are orchestrated by small G-proteins and the cytoskeleton.
- Rab7 knockout unveils regulated autolysosome maturation induced by glutamine starvation
Highlighted Article: Through analysis of Rab7-knockout cells, this paper shows that Rab7 is dispensable for autophagosome–lysosome fusion and that glutamine starvation regulates autolysosome maturation in cultured mammalian cells.
- Matrix elasticity regulates mesenchymal stem cell chemotaxis
Summary: hMSCs exhibit faster chemotaxis with fewer focal adhesions and an increased protrusion rate on soft substrates, suggesting that the total speed of a cell is the sum of stiffness-dependent and chemokine-dependent components.
- Phosphorylation hotspot in the C-terminal domain of occludin regulates the dynamics of epithelial junctional complexes
Summary: A conserved sequence in occludin determines the dynamic property of tight junctions and adherens junctions in the renal and intestinal epithelia, and regulates collective cell migration.
This issue
Other journals from The Company of Biologists
Editorial – The good, the bad and the very useful – at least to cell biologists
Editor-in-Chief, Michael Way, discusses the exciting potential of examining the intimate relationship between pathogens, cells and hosts for cell biology research. Submissions are welcome for the fifth JCS Special Issue, guest edited by Derek Walsh, focussing on host-pathogen interactions.
Cell Science at a Glance – The fusogenic synapse at a glance
In their Cell Science at a Glance, Ji Hoon Jim and Elizabeth H. Chen highlight the molecular, cellular and biophysical events at the asymmetric fusogenic synapse.
Review – Force-generating mechanisms of anaphase in human cells
Kruno Vukušić, Renata Buđa and Iva M. Tolić review contributions of force-generating mechanisms, acting through different microtubule populations, to chromosome segregation in human cells.
First Person interviews
Have you seen our First Person interviews with the early-career first authors of our papers? The authors talk about their work in and out of the lab, the journeys that led them to where they are now and the scientists who inspired them along the way. Recently, we caught up with first authors Bouchra Khalaf, Bapi Sarker, Amrit Bagchi and Tak Shun Fung.
Mole – Impact! III
“Over the last five years, there were 1,141,540 papers published per year that were listed in PubMed. If you read them for 8 h per day, 5 days week, for 50 weeks year, you would have to read about ten papers a minute to read them all.”
Read Mole’s thoughts on the issue of impact in scientific literature.
preLights – preLights reaches 500 posts!
The success of preLights is down to the hard work of our preLighters. Head over to the preLights website to find out more about our most active early-career-researchers.
Journal Meeting – Cell Dynamics: Host-Pathogen Interface
Registration is now open for the third instalment of the highly successful Cellular Dynamics Meeting Series, which will take place on 17-20 May 2020 and will focus on ‘Host-Pathogen Interface’.
Articles of interest in our sister journals
Scribble and Discs Large mediate tricellular junction formation
Zohreh Sharifkhodaei, Mary M. Gilbert, Vanessa J. Auld (Development 2019 146: dev174763)
Annabel Ebbing, Teije C. Middelkoop, Marco C. Betist, Eduard Bodewes, Hendrik C. Korswagen (Development 2019 146: dev180059)