Rebecca Sohn is a freelance science writer. She writes about a variety of science, health and environmental topics, and is particularly interested in how science impacts people's lives. She has been an intern at CalMatters and STAT, as well as a science fellow at Mashable. Rebecca, a native of the Boston area, studied English literature and minored in music at Skidmore College in Upstate New York and later studied science journalism at New York University.
A newfound mini-organ in mammal cells is a trap that snaps shut around tiny rings of DNA. Scientists believe it may be an in-built defense system for the genome and a relic from a time before complex cells.
But in a recent study, researchers identified a unique structure that could help explain how cells might keep this DNA away from the nucleus. Kroschewski and her colleagues introduced teensy loops of DNA called plasmids into different types of human cells, including cells grown from donated tissue and HeLa cells — the first"immortal" cell line derived from the cancer cells of a woman named Henrietta Lacks. They found that, in every case, a double membrane formed around the plasmid, forming the structure they call an exclusome.
The process of capturing plasmids could be an evolutionary relic of the cellular machinery that helped form the first nuclear membranes around chromosomal DNA, Kroschewski said. But exclusomes seem unique in that they only capture genetic material that the cell thinks is potentially dangerous or unnecessary.
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