Moonlighting functions of endocytic proteins during the cell cycle

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Cells can be thought of as islands - they are closed to the outside world because they have a plasma membrane that doesn't let anything through. However, cells have evolved tiny portals for things to enter in a tightly regulated way. These portals are working all the time, but they are shut down when the cell needs to divide. It is important that no mistakes are made at this time. Otherwise the cell could die or it could start to grow in an unusual way leading to disease e.g. cancer. Nobody knows how this shutdown happens. We want to study the portals using a machine that can tell us all the pieces that make up a portal. If we compare portals from normal cells with those that are dividing this will tell us which pieces are missing in dividing cells. We can then find out how the cell takes these pieces away at the start of cell division. We think that this work is important to do. These portals are hijacked by viruses: they use portals as a way to infect cells. If we knew how the cell shuts down the portals, we could think of ways to switch them off using drugs. These drugs could be used as anti-viral treatments.