Imagine trying to figure out how your car's power train works from just a few of its myriad components: It would be nearly impossible. Scientists have long faced a similar challenge in understanding cells' tiny powerhouses — called "mitochondria" — from scant knowledge of their molecular parts.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered that the activity of a specific family of nanometer-sized molecular motors called myosin-I is regulated by force. The motor puts tension on cellular springs that allow vibrations to be detected within the body.

Scientists have determined that human cells are able to shift important gene products into their own mitochondria, considered the power plants of cells. The finding could eventually lead to therapies for dozens of diseases.

Researchers from Northwestern University and Texas A & M University have discovered a new way to limit gene transfer and expression to specific tissues in animals.

Duke University Medical Center scientists have found a mechanism that allows cells starved of iron to shut down energy-making processes that depend on iron and use a less efficient pathway involving glucose. This metabolic reshuffling mechanism, found in yeast cells, helps explain how humans respond to iron deficiency, and may help with diabetes research as well.

Developing fundamental math and mechanics to explain life processes like embryo development, cellular migration and growth could open doors to a new frontier in biology, many researchers say.

A team of researchers at Harvard University have modeled in the laboratory a primitive cell, or protocell, that is capable of building, copying and containing DNA.

For an organism to develop and function, the individual cells must exchange information, or communicate, with each other.

When the first cells developed, how could they bring molecules from the environment into their living interior without the specialized structures found on the modern cell membrane? A research team from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has found that the sort of very simple membrane that may have been present on primitive cells can easily allow small molecules – including the building blocks of RNA and DNA – to pass thorough.

Developing techniques to image the complex biological systems found at the sub-cellular level has traditionally been hampered by divisions between the academic fields of biology and physics. However, a new interdisciplinary zeal has seen a number of exciting advances in super-resolution imaging technologies.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have uncovered definitive evidence that a small but potent subset of immune system B cells is able to regulate inflammation.

The world's first optical pacemaker is described in an article published today in Optics Express, the Optical Society’s open-access journal. A team of scientists at Osaka University in Japan show that powerful, but very short, laser pulses can help control the beating of heart muscle cells.