Much like investors in the stock market, cell populations prepare for changes in the environment by spreading the risk. The tool box they use contains a repertoire of sensory receptors on the surface of individual cells. These receptors can be tweaked to make individual members of the population responsive to different environmental signals. It was thought that cells could only modify this diversity relatively slowly, by producing new receptor proteins or degrading them. Scientists at AMOLF (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and Yale University (New Haven, CT) now report the discovery of a mechanism that enables cell populations to tune their diversity much faster, by a combination of physical and chemical interactions between existing proteins. The findings are published in the journal Science Advances on November 13.
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Source: Phys.org