Bottlebrush Barrier. The glycocalyx layer (purple, left) that coats brain blood vessels consists of numerous glycoproteins, glycolipids, and proteoglycans (right), including the bottlebrush-shaped ...

In a study in aging mice, Shi has uncovered striking age-related changes in the sugary coating – called the glycocalyx – on cells that form the blood-brain barrier, a structure that protects ...

Shi was able to demonstrate that in this sugary layer called the glycocalyx, branched glycoproteins called mucins are an important component. Shi also observed that the number of mucins compared ...

While prokaryotic cells do not have membrane-bound structures, they do have distinct cellular regions (Figure 1). In prokaryotic cells, DNA bundles together in a region called the nucleoid. Primitive ...

A new method exposes key details of the mechanism behind calcium signaling in prokaryotes for the first time. Working in a Listeria monocytogenes model, researchers from Umeå University (Sweden) led ...

The tiny creatures, known as “prokaryotes”, comprise 30% of life in the world’s oceans. These organisms play an important role in keeping the oceans in balance. But new research by myself ...

Why have bacteria never evolved complex multicellularity? A new hypothesis suggests that it could come down to how prokaryotic genomes respond to a small population size. Every organism visible to the ...

Rebecca Roberts is a science writer and communicator. She earned her PhD in molecular biology from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at ...

The starting point of their approach was the glycocalyx, a carbohydrate-rich layer that coats the cells on the surface of the intestine. Beneficial gut bacteria, which have their own matching ...

Organisms on planet earth are broadly divided into prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The former are unicellular, do not have any organelles such as mitochondria, and their DNA is not packaged into a ...