CIENCIASMEDICASNEWS: BMC Biophysics

sábado, 17 de diciembre de 2016

BMC Biophysics | Home page

BMC Biophysics | Home page
Biomed Central

Featured Article: Exploring in vivo cholesterol-mediated interactions between activated EGF receptors in plasma membrane with single-molecule optical tracking

Receptor dimerization is instrumental to the signal transduction activity of many transmembrane receptors, such as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). In this study, unbound and liganded EGFRs were fluorescently labelled to track their single-molecule trajetories on the surface of living cells in vitro. The results show EGFRs moving to cholesterol-rich regions of the plasma membrane upon ligand binding, and support a role for cholesterol in the regulation of liganded receptor dimerization.

Molecular diffusion - the movement of molecules through a medium – can greatly influence key biological processes at the cellular and tissue level. One method of modeling biological diffusion is Brownian Dynamics, which permits analysis of diffusion effects at a macromolecular scale. This collection of articles published throughout 2014 and 2015 is the second BMC Biophysics article series exploring novel models and simulations of diffusion dynamics affecting asymmetric cell division, enzyme kinetics, cytokine signaling, and more.