If the changing seasons are making it chilly inside your house, you might just turn the heater on. That's a reasonable response to a cold environment: switching to a toastier and more comfortable state until it warms up outside. And so it's no surprise that biologists have long thought cells would respond to their environment in a similar way.
But now researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are finding that cells can respond using a new kind of pulsating mechanism, instead of just shifting from one steady state to another and staying there. The principles behind this process are surprisingly simple, the researchers say, and could drive other cellular processes, revealing more about how the cells -- and ultimately life -- work.
In their experiment, the researchers studied how a bacterial species called B. subtilis responds to a stressful environment -- for example, one without food.
Click "source" to read the entire article.
But now researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are finding that cells can respond using a new kind of pulsating mechanism, instead of just shifting from one steady state to another and staying there. The principles behind this process are surprisingly simple, the researchers say, and could drive other cellular processes, revealing more about how the cells -- and ultimately life -- work.
In their experiment, the researchers studied how a bacterial species called B. subtilis responds to a stressful environment -- for example, one without food.
Click "source" to read the entire article.
