In the evolutionary history of life, the ability of a cell to separate its inner world from the external environment was an important turning point. The so-called plasma membrane lets cells control ...

image: An MIT-led team designed a sensor that may be deployed to screen patients for hard-to-diagnose cancers, or metastatic tumors. The device draws inspiration from the membrane that surrounds all ...

A study could open new pathways for understanding how cholesterol influences cell membranes and their receptors, paving the way for future research on diseases linked to membrane organization. A new ...

The upper size limit on cell-penetrating drug molecules may be much higher than medicinal chemists had thought. A research team reports that molecules believed to be much too large to diffuse across ...

Proteins long known to be essential for hearing have been hiding a talent: they also act as gatekeepers that shuffle fatty ...

Special proteins -- known as membrane transporters -- are key to the mobility of sperm cells. A research team has, with the aid of cryo-electron microscopy, succeeded in decoding the structure of such ...

Mitochondria are essential for cell survival, repair, and adaptation. Not only do they generate most of the energy needed ...

Scientists link TMC protein membrane disruption to hearing loss, showing how mutations, drugs and noise trigger hair cell death and deafness.

(Nanowerk News) Drawing inspiration from natural sensory systems, an MIT-led team has designed a novel sensor that could detect the same molecules that naturally occurring cell receptors can identify.