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  • Stem cells, and the microenvironment or 'niche' that influences them, must often reside in a particular location within a tissue to perform their function. Integrin-mediated adhesion is now shown to regulate the location of the stem-cell niche in the Drosophila testis.

    • Mark Van Doren
    News & Views
  • Collective cell invasion into the extracellular matrix (ECM) has been observed in malignant tumours and in tissue morphogenesis. To achieve this, leading cells trigger both proteolytic and structural modifications of the ECM to create channels that precede progressively widening chains of following cells.

    • Derek C. Radisky
    News & Views
  • How is RNA Polymerase II (RNAP) regulated at poised loci in embryonic stem cells? Recent work provides new insights into Ring1-mediated transcriptional control of this important subset of developmental regulatory genes.

    • Tanya M. Spektor
    • Judd C. Rice
    News & Views
  • The control of cell size through the coordination of cell growth and division is a longstanding fundamental problem. A study in fission yeast shows that TOR controls entry into mitosis through the MAP kinase Sty1 and so provides a molecular mechanism for the control of cell size.

    • Thomas W. Sturgill
    • Michael N. Hall
    News & Views
  • Most intracellular organelles are surrounded by a lipid bilayer and require specialized machinery for membrane fusion. Remarkably, lipid droplets, which contain a hydrophobic core and a monolayer of membrane lipids, can sequester distinct components of this fusion machinery and thereby downregulate certain types of exocytosis.

    • Thomas H. Söllner
    News & Views
  • The mitotic spindle is the molecular machine that distributes the chromosomes to the two daughter cells. By developing techniques to look at the behaviour of individual microtubules within the spindle, new insights into the organization of this exquisite structure have been provided.

    • Sidney L. Shaw
    • Claire E. Walczak
    News & Views
  • How do developing organs sense and limit their size? The recently discovered Hippo pathway might have a critical role in controlling organ size and homeostasis in many organisms from Drosophila to mammals.

    • Laura A. Buttitta
    • Bruce A. Edgar
    News & Views
  • Mitochondrial dysfunction is primarily responsible for neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease. The Parkinson's-disease-associated kinase PINK1 has been identified as an important regulator of the activity of the mitochondria-associated stress-protective protease HtrA2.

    • Emad S. Alnemri
    News & Views
  • The transcription factor PPAR-γ determines whether mesenchymal stem cells differentiate into adipocytes or osteoblasts. The finding that non-canonical Wnt signalling represses PPAR-γ through assembly of a nuclear corepressor complex containing the histone methyltransferase SETDB1 provides the first insight into how extracellular signals can regulate chromatin modification.

    • Thomas Günther
    • Roland Schüle
    News & Views
  • Mitosis in vertebrates involves nuclear-envelope breakdown and dispersal. On completion of chromatid segregation, disassembled nuclear-envelope components are reused to form nuclear membranes in the two daughter cells, and the endoplasmic reticulum membrane seems to make a key contribution to this process.

    • Brian Burke
    News & Views
  • The class III phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI(3)KC3) is part of a key complex regulating autophagy. How this complex mechanistically contributes to autophagosome formation remains largely unknown. The BAR-domain-containing protein Bif-1/endophilin B1, commonly associated with the control of membrane curvature, has been identified as a new interacting partner for PI(3)KC3, suggesting the complex plays an active part in the regulation of membrane dynamics during autophagy.

    • Muriel Mari
    • Fulvio Reggiori
    News & Views
  • The transcription factor Hand1 is required for cell-fate determination during placental development. Recent work shows that release of Hand1 from the nucleolus controls differentiation of trophoblast stem cells into trophoblast giant cells, and this switch is controlled by the antagonistic activities of HICp40 and Polo-like kinase-4 (Plk4).

    • Marvin E. Tanenbaum
    • René H. Medemao
    News & Views
  • The evolutionarily conserved PAR3–PAR6–aPKC–Cdc42 complex has a well-established role in cell polarity. The exact job of PAR proteins in polarity is not known, but the finding that they affect endocytosis casts new light on their function.

    • Frédéric Wissler
    • Michel Labouesse
    News & Views
  • Toll-like receptors participate in the inflammatory response and are now shown to act in neural precursor cells to regulate adult hippocampal neurogenesis. The dialogue between inflammatory components and neural precursor cells might have important consequences for central nervous system homeostasis and repair.

    • Gianvito Martino
    • Stefano Pluchino
    News & Views
  • Most organisms, from bacteria to humans, can follow temperature gradients to an optimal temperature. Experience influences eukaryotes' preferred temperature, and, as it turns out, bacteria also adjust their temperature preference depending on growth conditions.

    • Victor Sourjik
    • Ned S. Wingreen
    News & Views
  • A new study of the zebrafish intestine has uncovered a transcriptional hierarchy controlling lumen formation and proposes a model for how transcellular and paracellular transport synergize to ensure that only a single lumen is produced.

    • Heinz-Georg Belting
    • Markus Affolter
    News & Views
  • Last year it was reported that a cocktail of four transcription factors — encoded by Oct4, Sox2, Myc and Klf4 — can partly reprogramme mouse somatic cells to an embryonic state, a process that reawakens silenced segments of the genome and restores pluripotency to the somatic cell nucleus. Three groups have now modified this method to generate fully reprogrammed cells that closely resemble embryonic stem cells.

    • In-Hyun Park
    • George Q. Daley
    News & Views
  • Permeabilization of the mitochondria usually leads to caspase activation and apoptosis. In the absence of caspase activation, these same mitochondrial changes can also lead to cell death. A recent study suggests that when good mitochondria go bad, the activation of both glycolysis and autophagy may permit cellular survival.

    • Shiwei Song
    • Toren Finkel
    News & Views