Researchers report first-ever protein hydrogels made in living cells
Johns Hopkins cell biologists report what they believe is the first-ever creation of tiny, gelatin-like clumps called hydrogels inside living cells. The ability to create hydrogels on demand, they say, could advance the effort to study elusive cell structures that form in nature under certain conditions—and to uncover how these structures contribute to human diseases.
"The exciting part of this work is not just that we made hydrogels, but that we're now equipped with this powerful technique that lets us ask fundamental and very challenging questions about them," says Takanari Inoue, an associate professor of cell biology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and senior author of the report on the research, which was published online today in the journal Nature Materials.