Biology

Scientists have attempted to map the human cell since the first microscope was invented more than 400 years ago. But many components of the cell still remain uncharted.

“ We know each of the proteins that exist in our cells, but how they fit together to then carry out the function of a cell still remains largely unknown across cell types,” said Leah Schaffer, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research scholar at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Now, Schaffer and her colleagues at UC San Diego — in collaboration with researchers at Stanford University, Harvard Medical School and the University of British Columbia — have created a comprehensive, interactive map of U2OS cells, which are associated with pediatric bone tumors. They combined high-resolution microscope imaging and biophysical interactions of proteins to map the subcellular architecture and protein assemblies in the cell. The map revealed previously unknown protein functions and will help the researchers understand how mutated proteins contribute to diseases such as childhood cancers. It will also serve as a reference for developing maps of other cell types. The study will be published on April 9, 2025 in Nature.

“Based on cell biology 101 and textbook pictures of cells, you might think that we understand everything about a cell. But what’s remarkable is that for no human cell type do we really have a proper parts catalog and assembly manual,” said co-senior author Trey Ideker, Ph.D., a professor of genetics in the Department of Medicine, an adjunct professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Computer Science and Engineering, and a member of Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego.

The mapping projects referenced in this story are really fucking cool:

https://www.proteinatlas.org/

https://musicmaps.ai/u2os-cellmap/

The world has been gripped by the case of Australian woman Erin Patterson, who was charged with the murder of three people after allegedly serving them a lunch of beef wellington containing poisonous death cap mushrooms (Amanita phalloides).

A new element of the sensational story emerged in court this week, when prosecutors reportedly alleged Patterson used iNaturalist to locate and visit places where death cap mushrooms were known to grow.

Presented by Dr. Brian Davis, University of Louisville, April 10, 2025.

The Mesozoic is commonly known as the "Age of Dinosaurs." The beginning of our own branch of the family tree was unfolding at the same time, mostly in the shadows. Mammals might have been tiny, but they experimented with a wide range of lifestyles. In this talk, Dr. Brian Davis explores what early mammals were like, and how palaeontologists find their fossils. This presentation answers the question, “What do mammal fossils tell us about how they lived, and perhaps why they went on to become so wildly successful?”

Admittedly even as a layman I think this 45-minute lecture could've gone into more depth and skipped over some of the basics, but it's still a nice watch. Sadly the sound quality isn't very good, I had to turn on the auto-generated subtitles...

Archived (Wayback Machine):

• earth.com article
• full study in Nature as webpage and PDF

Here's a direct link to the journal article.

Summary: phylogenomic study found that Hexapoda (insects, springtails, headcones) is a sister clade to Remipedia (venomous, cave-dwelling "crustaceans"). So it's basically the same that happened with birds and dinos, except with bugs.