In eukaryotic cells microtubules and actin filaments help to generate the spatial organization of the cytoplasm that is required for polarity and shape. Recent work in fission yeast demonstrates that changing cell shape in turn reorganizes the cytoskeleton and cell polarization machinery.

T cell polarization toward and within the cellular interface with an APC is critical for effective T cell activation. The Rho family GTPase Cdc42 is a central regulator of cellular polarization. Using live-cell imaging, we characterized the spatiotemporal patterns of Cdc42 activity and their physiological regulation. Using three independent means of experimental manipulation of Cdc42 activity, ...

Wormwood sagebrush (Artemisia sieberi Besser) is one of the most widely distributed shrub species in Iran and Turkistan steppes, its establishment on dry lands has generally been proven difficult because of low seedling vigor, inability to compete with herbaceous species, poor seed quality, and altered edaphic conditions. In order to evaluation of planting methods and seedling establishment, se...

A recent analysis of spindle positioning in yeast sheds light on how interactions between microtubules and the cleavage apparatus are modulated through mitosis to promote and maintain proper positioning of the spindle and cleavage plane relative to each other.

Complexes consisting of PDZ proteins have been implicated in a variety of cellular processes. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that PDZ proteins play essential roles during the establishment of spatial asymmetry in various metazoan cell types such as epithelial cells. Epithelial cells possess asymmetry with respect to the apicobasal axis reflected by the differential distributi...

In this paper we describe a localization and local communication system which allows situated agents to communicate locally, obtaining at the same time both the range and the bearing of the emitter without the need of any centralized control or any external reference. The system relies on infrared communications with frequency modulation and is composed of two interconnected modules for data an...

The spindle orientation is a crucial piece of information to understand the development of embryo. The spindle forms during cell division and the cell divides along the spindle axis. Spindle orientation was measured in many different mutant embryos of Caenrohabditis elegans. However, the objectivity and the productivity of these measurements were low because these measurements were made manuall...

Ancestry analysis from genetic data plays a critical role in studies of human disease and evolution. Recent work has introduced explicit models for the geographic distribution of genetic variation and has shown that such explicit models yield superior accuracy in ancestry inference over nonmodel-based methods. Here we extend such work to introduce a method that models admixture between ancestor...

For cell morphogenesis, the cell must establish distinct spatial domains at specified locations at the cell surface. Here, we review the molecular mechanisms of cell polarity in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. These are simple rod-shaped cells that form cortical domains at cell tips for cell growth and at the cell middle for cytokinesis. In both cases, microtubule-based systems hel...

3D amoeboid cell migration is central to many developmental and disease-related processes such as cancer metastasis. Here, we identify a unique prototypic amoeboid cell migration mode in early zebrafish embryos, termed stable-bleb migration. Stable-bleb cells display an invariant polarized balloon-like shape with exceptional migration speed and persistence. Progenitor cells can be reversibly tr...